


The Unreachable Stars

by Dracoduceus



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: (spoiler: you can't drink away your problems), Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Hangover, M/M, Miscommunication, Non-Explicit Sex, emotional cowardice, touch-starved McCree, trying to drink away your problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:40:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27985533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: Hanzo and McCree have A Thing, but it's hard to want to continue it when your partner leaves as soon as the act is done. Hanzo's tried to compartmentalize his feelings with what he knows is just sex with McCree. It works until it doesn't.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Comments: 26
Kudos: 191





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [youraveragejoke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youraveragejoke/gifts).



> I blame YourAverageJoke this time for introducing me to the angsty headcanon of McCree’s chestplate being necessary for survival due to the injury that destroyed his arm. I based part of it off of the idea of the original Iron Man needing his suit to survive, as it was in the comics. Or so I’m led to believe. To be quite honest, I haven’t read the original comics.
> 
> The title comes from a quote from Miguel De Cervantes: "One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this."

Hanzo flopped on the bed, skin sticky with sweat and aching so pleasantly. For a long moment, the only sound in the room was their ragged breathing, just out of synch. Hanzo resisted the urge to breathe in time with McCree and instead rolled on his side to look at his friend.

McCree had already moved to the rest of his clothes, shrugging into his flannel and hopping into his jeans and boxers.

Frowning, Hanzo sat up. His enjoyment of the ache and exertion faded. “You’re leaving?” he asked, trying not to sound too hurt about it.

For a moment, McCree froze. “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry,” he added as he buckled his pants and ran a hand through his sweaty hair. At the door he paused, and looked back at Hanzo with a nervousness that Hanzo had never seen on him. He was still breathing hard and his eyes seemed too wide as if he was on the verge of a panic attack.

Hanzo watched him hold his breath so he could say evenly, awkwardly, “um…thanks.”

Perplexed and somewhat hurt, Hanzo watched as McCree barely remembered to close the door behind him, listened to the sound of McCree’s shoes—strangely quiet without his spurs—thumping on the ground as he literally ran away.

Rolling on his back, Hanzo let his head thump against the bed—possible only because of how hard the mattress was and how thin the pillows were—and sighed. “That could have gone better,” he told the ceiling. A spider that he had recently noticed take residency in the upper corner of his room was unsympathetic. “I didn’t ask for _your_ opinion,” he told it tartly and rolled over so he wouldn’t have to look at it.

He imagined that it was mocking him though, even though he knew that arachnids cared not for the problems of humans. Those eight imaginary, mocking eyes bored into the back of his neck as post-coital bliss turned sour.

With a sigh that felt like it went on forever, that felt like it pushed everything out of him, Hanzo closed his eyes and told himself that he wasn’t upset.

* * *

It wasn’t an isolated incident.

Hanzo had lost count of how many times he and McCree had fallen into bed—always _his_ bed.

How many times that McCree had immediately gotten dressed and left.

Like clockwork. With an abruptness that was almost insulting. As soon as the both of them were finished, Hanzo scarcely took two breaths before McCree was on his feet, tugging on his clothes, and running—literally running—away.

From Hanzo? From something that he didn’t want? Was he afraid that if he stayed, Hanzo would grow too attached, would look too far into a relationship that didn’t exist?

Little did he know that it was too late for that. Hanzo already wished for something that they’d never had, but he was also very good at compartmentalizing. “Just sex” with McCree was enough, but he had never expected McCree to be so literal.

It wasn’t “just sex” though. They had drinks, they were close. A few times, while drunk out of their minds they made out like horny teenagers. One memorable time, McCree had pressed Hanzo against the dirty walls of a back alley after fighting off a small gang that thought that they could take on McCree and Hanzo even as drunk as they pretended to be. Among the twitching bodies and piles of trash, McCree took them both in hand and stroked them until Hanzo had to muffle his cries in McCree’s neck. His fingers found the edges of McCree’s chestplate, hidden beneath his shirt, and clung to it as if it would keep him from floating away.

That time, McCree had lingered. He milked them both until they were both twitching and gasping from overstimulation. He rested his dirty hand against the wall by Hanzo’s head and used the other to tip his chin up for slow, sated kisses as they caught their breath.

As far as Hanzo was concerned, it was a once-off. That was the first—and thus far _only_ —time that McCree looked at him so tenderly.

That was the first and _only_ time that McCree had stuck around.

He’d wiped his dirty hand on the dirty shirt of one of the unconscious gang members then looping his arm “drunkenly” around Hanzo’s waist, began to stumble off again, slipping effortlessly into their cover once more.

From there, Hanzo wanted to believe that there was more to the way that McCree’s hand cupped his hip, the way his thumb brushed his sides.

But another visit to Hanzo’s room, another time where he literally ran away, and Hanzo knew that he had only stuck around for their cover.

He was surprised at how much it hurt.

* * *

Hanzo slid his hands beneath McCree’s shirt and found them immediately pinned to the bed, the grip of McCree’s prosthesis grinding the bones of his wrist together, bruising his skin and making Hanzo grit his teeth.

“Don’t,” McCree had whispered breathlessly. There was something wild in his eyes. Something scared. Angry.

Hanzo’s hurt turned to anger. He rolled them both, throwing McCree to the bed and straddling his hips. Then he climbed off and stepped back. “Get out.”

Slowly, McCree sat up. “Han—”

“Get. Out.” McCree swallowed but this time he obeyed. He paused in the doorway like he always did but this time he said nothing and left. His steps, where Hanzo could hear them, were slow and heavy.

Hanzo looked down at his wrists. Already they were turning purple, the bones aching. Already the skin was swelling and Hanzo hoped that it wasn’t a bone bruise. He sat down heavily on the bed. Then he stood up and grabbed his gear.

He needed to shoot something.

* * *

It was a bone bruise. At least it wasn’t a fracture, he supposed.

Dr. Ziegler asked but even knowing that she wouldn’t tell anyone about the reasons—even knowing that she took doctor-patient confidentiality very seriously—he didn’t need to see the pity in her eyes when she realized that he sought a relationship with a man that wanted only sex.

If Hanzo was being honest, he thought the “wanting only sex” part was also extremely dubious, given how quickly McCree ran away.

He didn’t want to see her argue with herself whether to give him advice or not. To talk more to him about unhealthy relationships and vices and unhealthy coping mechanisms; to recommend a psychiatrist to deal with his issues.

So he didn’t tell her and was frustrated when she pulled him off the roster for two weeks. “If I can’t justify it,” she said goadingly. “If I can’t write it off as an...expense, as something that I can explain was a direct product of fighting or training, then I can’t use any biotics. That means that these must heal naturally and you are not able to go into the field with your bow. I am banning you from practicing archery for the first week, until I can confirm that you are healing.”

She had given him a frustratingly smug look, as if she thought that that would sway him. It was worth it to see her disappointment when he calmly accepted her verdict and left.

“I heard that you’re pulled from the field,” McCree said quietly.

Hanzo took a deep, slow breath, and slid his finger along the trigger guard; as he slowly exhaled, he pulled the trigger. “Yes,” he said coolly. He worked the bolt and reloaded.

Took a deep breath.

Sighed into the shot.

McCree let Hanzo shoot and reload three more times before saying, “Are you mad at me?”

Slowly, Hanzo put the rifle down—making sure to flip on the safety—and slapped the button to bring the paper target in. The winch groaned as it reeled the target toward Hanzo, who inspected it critically.

Only then did he turn to look at McCree, who looked uncharacteristically meek. “What do you want, McCree?” he asked a little sharply.

McCree fiddled with his hat, which he had taken off for the conversation. “I wanted to apologize.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Hanzo said and McCree flinched as if he had been deliberately misinterpreting the question, perhaps in hopes that Hanzo would let him off easy. But maybe Hanzo was once more misunderstanding. “What do you want with _us_ , McCree? Do you just want sex? Or did you want something else?”

He watched McCree swallow hard. McCree’s behavior was baffling, wholly uncharacteristic of him. “I thought that you would ask me about why I hurt you,” McCree said. “What does this matter?”

“It matters to me,” Hanzo told him. “Because I am invested in us—whatever ‘we’ may be. Friends, lovers, or something more. Maybe just friends with benefits, something to do to take the edge off.” He held up his right wrist, where the bright violet and yellow bruises were much more visible. “If we’re nothing, then we’re nothing and that’s the end of it. If we’re not—if we’re friends or more or _whatever_ —I need to know what I’m working with.”

With a tragic look that made Hanzo’s heart hurt, McCree put aside his hat and gently touched Hanzo’s wrist. Once upon a time, such tenderness would make Hanzo’s heart skip a beat, would make him hope for something that would never be. Now he was a confused, muddled, jumbled mess and didn’t know _what_ to feel anymore.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” McCree admitted quietly, running his hand so gently over the dark bruises that Hanzo almost didn’t feel it. “I just…you scared me.”

“If it’s trauma,” Hanzo hissed, forcing the words out when he wanted to accept it at that. Perhaps he was growing soft in his old age. “For something as innocuous as putting my hands under your shirt, then perhaps I should be aware of this.”

McCree looked torn. “It’s…an old injury,” he said vaguely, with the air of someone not telling the whole truth. “It…makes me react. Poorly.”

It hurt him as bad as the injury itself did to pull his hands out of McCree’s loose grip. “If I cannot trust you to tell me about something that you are aware of—about something that you _know_ will force you to lash out—then how can I trust you with anything else?”

“I was scared,” McCree said feebly. There was a strange kind of fear in his eyes that almost made Hanzo pause. “I…Han, you _know_ that I would _never_ hurt you on purpose. Not…”

“It wasn’t on purpose,” Hanzo conceded. “But it was no accident by virtue of us not properly communicating. I accept partial responsibility in that but…you need to tell me. So I ask you once more: what is this? What are _we_? And how can I know that something like this—you deliberately withholding information from me that might result in our injury or trauma—won’t happen again?”

McCree stared at him, that same tragic look on his face. It didn’t match his perpetual scowl—the complement to Hanzo’s Resting Bitch Face—or his easygoing air, or any of the personas he had built up around himself. It didn’t even match the killer that Hanzo knew he was. He looked like a scared little boy.

The pieces began to fall into place.

“This is why you don’t stay behind,” Hanzo realized. “Why you’ve _never_ stayed behind. This wasn’t just about the other day—this has been _months_.”

“I thought you’d ask,” McCree protested. “I—”

“Because me asking is easier than you volunteering the information,” Hanzo hissed. Hurt gave way to anger; a moment later the hurt would return, followed by bitter regret and sadness, but those were things that a hefty dose of alcohol and nicotine could cure.

He picked up the rifle and locked it away in its case, but McCree didn’t stop him.

He yanked the paper target from the hook, making the metal wire bounce, but McCree didn’t say anything.

Anger made him numb to the ache in his wrists as he slung the case over his shoulder and snatched up the box of ammo. McCree still stood there, watching him with those sad eyes. As if this was all an inevitability.

Perhaps it wouldn’t have been, if he had volunteered such simple information. _Don’t touch my chest please_ , would have been an easy request. _Something happened that I don’t want to talk about_ ; Hanzo knew about scars, both physical and mental. He knew about things that should not be said, things that were avoidable and things that weren’t; he was willing—still was, because he’s an asshole but not _that kind_ of an asshole—to do his very best to avoid those minefields.

But how can he avoid what he didn’t know was there?

McCree didn’t stop him, didn’t say anything when Hanzo walked past him and out the door to the indoor shooting range. He almost wished he did, but perhaps he had, as ever, been looking too far into this.

He had just been another warm body to fill a need for McCree. He had not been meant to get as close as he had and now he was paying the price for his naivety.

Head down, he hefted the bag on his shoulder again and let the ache in his wrists serve as a reminder. He trudged off to his room and told himself that the eyes he felt on the back of his neck meant nothing.

They were only there, only burned because of the loss of a means of coping. Nothing more.

* * *

He at least managed to make it back to his room before he broke down.

It was disappointment on disappointment, a pain that had been building in the background until it erupted.

Worse was the knowledge that he couldn’t speak of this to anyone. Their… _relationship_ hadn’t been common knowledge, and he wasn’t close enough to anyone anyway. He could not burden anyone with the issues of his personal life, not when they all had problems of their own: the Old Guard with the ghosts of their past, Genji with his own traumas with Hanzo (not to mention being his brother and thus wanting nothing to do with Hanzo’s sex life) Hana with her fear of the danger to her homeland. He would not be the one to burden anyone else with his issue—his and McCree’s—with communicating like actual, well-adjusted adults.

So he consulted the genie at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey that McCree had left behind; when that one couldn’t give him a satisfactory answer, he consulted another. Still finding no answer but feeling delightfully detached from reality, Hanzo sat in his windowsill and smoked. Hana hated it, her window being near his, but he was reasonably sure that she wasn’t in her room and was pretty sure that it wasn’t open if it was, so even if he wasn’t numb from the liquor, he wouldn’t feel too guilty.

That night, he only slept because he passed out fully dressed on top of the covers, the last dregs of a bottle of cheap vodka, flavored with tears, soaking into his pillow.

* * *

Like an old injury, McCree lingered at the edge of his consciousness. Thoughts of him ached; Hanzo wasn’t sure if his wrists hurt more than his chest whenever he so casually thought of his old friend. Things that he thought were funny, that he had once made note of to tell McCree had lost their luster.

Finding a bottle of cheap beer with a pickled serrano chili—something that he and McCree would have challenged each other to drink—was less exciting. It was more like a knife was twisted in his ribs where he once would have laughed or smiled.

It wasn’t like he could _avoid_ McCree, anyway. They were still on a team together, but their relationship was more like the one that Hanzo had with everyone else on base.

Tense.

Professional.

A few times McCree had tried to speak to him again but when Hanzo looked at him levelly, challenged him with his eyes to continue their conversation—to say what he had been reluctant to say in the firing range—he always turned away.

Coward. But Hanzo was a coward too.

Pet names grew less common, jokes and warmth once shared over the comms faded. McCree always stared after him like his loss meant something but it clearly didn’t because even though Hanzo gave him chance after chance—alone and in public—to speak his mind, to say his piece, he still said nothing.

When he was cleared to go back into the field, he found himself in Rialto, running over rooftops while covering the team. His eyes were still drawn to McCree by some magnetic force.

But there was nothing left between them—he had to remember that. There were no biting, desperate kisses where nobody could see them, in the moonlight at “their spot” on base. There was no smile in McCree’s eyes whenever he looked at Hanzo—all that was left was a dizzying kind of emptiness, a strange uncertainty as if the floor to McCree’s world had fallen out from beneath his feet.

That made two of them.

They were nearing the end of a successful and relatively uneventful mission when Hanzo heard the muted roar. It must have been louder beside the payload because he watched McCree and Tracer both flinch. There was no hesitation though; they were career military—or something like it—and their bodies knew an ambush even if their minds didn’t.

Some preternatural sense made him duck aside just as a red light streaked past him. He’d heard of stories of these Assassins, heard whispers that a mole had given proprietary knowledge to Talon to create them. They were based on a quirk of Lena’s chronal accelerator, which allowed her to “blink”. With no understanding of how the accelerator truly worked, it only allowed these Assassins to move very quickly.

The roar came again, and Hanzo knew exactly what they were fighting down below.

A Heavy.

Even as his stomach sank into his toes, he reached for his quiver traced the dazzling red light left in the Assassin’s wake. Her laugh trailed behind her, taunting him as she darted in a spiral around him. Eventually he would be trapped by her, cut to pieces on her knives but there was something he had that she hadn’t counted on.

Let her see him reach for the quiver on his back.

Let her think that he’d try to shoot her.

It would be all the more surprising for her when— _there!_

He grunted as her momentum traveled up his arm and into his shoulder. She gurgled, coughed, and fell still—her speed had forced the knife deeper, hard enough that he thought that he had felt her ribs break.

With another grunt, he tossed her body aside and pulled his knife out of her body, wiping it on his hip. The thought of having to clean it—a task that McCree enjoyed to do—returned him to the rest of the battle.

His quiver, its strap cut by the Assassin, began to fall; he managed to catch a few arrows before it tumbled down and away, slipping off of the steep terracotta roof tiles. The loss of his gear meant little to him except that he had to make these shots count.

It was easy to find the Heavy as he sprinted along the roofs, following the creature’s roar and the sound of gunfire echoing off the bright white stucco and whatever polished stone (marble? Granite? Alabaster?) that decorated the exterior of the buildings. Likely they were ruined, more than ruined, by the Heavy’s gunfire and his wild charges.

He caught sight of it just as it was turning toward Lúcio; then it twisted slightly and Hanzo saw red as it swatted McCree away, as one would swat a fly. McCree hit a decorative column and crumpled to the ground, not moving.

Hanzo didn’t remember moving.

He didn’t remember screaming the familiar incantation, didn’t remember putting one of his last arrows to the string. He didn’t remember releasing them, didn’t remember the wash of sparkling blue.

All that was on his mind—in his mind—was the image of McCree slumped at the base of a crumbled column, his chestplate crumpled like a soda can.

He ran in the wake of his dragons, running faster than he ever remembered moving. Suddenly the Heavy was there, right in front of him, and he roared in the same ethereal voice of the dragons as he drew his knife. He could feel the impact of the blade striking the Heavy’s thick armor all the way up in his shoulder. It rattled his teeth as he put all of his weight and momentum into the blade.

Hanzo could feel his hand slip on the handle, which was still wet with the Assassin’s blood, to slam into the tsuba. It would bruise later, turning bright purple and swelling, but at that moment he didn’t feel it. All he could feel was the fury, the fear, and the triumph when the knife moved.

It slipped along the Heavy’s damaged armor and found one of the seams that allowed it to wiggle through. The Heavy roared and Hanzo shoved the blade as deep as he could, calling the dragons back. They roared through the sword and the blade like lightning and Hanzo felt himself flying backwards.

When the world stopped spinning and he could see clearly again, Hanzo could hear the sound of boots. Cracking his eyes open, he found himself nearly in McCree’s lap—some kind of cosmic joke.

“Young punks,” a gruff voice said nearby and Hanzo tried to turn. A moment later, he recognized the voice: it was Soldier: 76. “Mercy will be with you shortly,” he added.

Hanzo heard a mechanical click and then a hiss; he sighed in relief as golden waves of biotic light washed over them both like waves on the shore. His head cleared first—he must have had a concussion—and he very carefully sat up.

When Soldier: 76 didn’t move to help him, he figured that either the old medic didn’t consider him damaged enough, or had figured that the pain would keep him horizontal. He found as he looked around that it was neither: Soldier: 76 had simply left them both and Hanzo laughed wetly.

Of course.

But that meant that Soldier: 76 didn’t think that they were damaged enough that he needed to stay.

Groaning, Hanzo turned over and looked at McCree, who was still slumped over. There was a pool of blood forming beneath him, but in Hanzo’s expert eye it wasn’t too bad—he’d feel the blood loss but as long as Mercy didn’t take too long to get to him, he wouldn’t die from exsanguination.

McCree’s eyelids fluttered and Hanzo realized that he was wheezing. It would be terrible to remove his armor completely, as Hanzo was certain that it was holding some of the blood in, but he needed to breathe.

“Hold on,” Hanzo croaked and reached for the side catches. He coughed and fumbled with the latches that he knew by heart. “Hold on,” he said again, stronger, as the biotic emitter did its work.

Glancing at it, he found that it was nearly empty, the plasticine capsule of medical nanites barely making it glow. Quickly, he did the math as his hands forced the first latch open on autopilot. McCree most certainly had ribs that were at least cracked—it was highly likely that a few were broken, given the force that had dented his chestplate to the degree that it had.

He tried to remember the order that nanites were programmed to treat injuries. Blood loss came first, so where possible they would have sealed McCree’s wounds. Soldier: 76’s biotic field was made for quick fixes—they wouldn’t quite know what to do for extensive internal bleeding.

They wouldn’t force out shrapnel or other foreign bodies; they would only force the skin to heal over or around it for removal at a later date. These biotic fields were the work of emergency medical professionals and battlefield medics from the Crisis; they weren’t the surgical nanites that Mercy preferred.

Most importantly, they weren’t the kind of nanites that McCree needed.

One side came loose and thinking a prayer to gods and spirits that he no longer believed in, Hanzo pried that side open. The metal creaked and groaned, but it came apart with a wet sound and remained cracked open, just a little. Immediately, McCree’s breathing eased just a little.

Hanzo only knew because his breathing had, at some point, synched with McCree’s.

He scrambled over to the other side and fumbled with the latches there when McCree woke up.

“No,” McCree croaked.

“Hold on,” Hanzo told him shortly. “I need to open these latches and release the pressure.”

McCree’s arm pawed at Hanzo’s. “No,” he gasped. “No. Stop.” His breathing grew harder, more labored.

Hanzo caught McCree’s hands in his own. “Stop,” he said sternly, or tried to. Even he could hear how it wavered and caught in his throat. “You need to hold still. You’ve been hurt.”

“I can’t breathe,” McCree gasped, the veins and tendons of his throat bulging as he struggled. His hands flopped weakly in Hanzo’s grip. “I can’t breathe.”

He could feel a soft click—as if a switch had been flipped. A sense of calm washed over him like the waves of nanites from Soldier: 76’s biotic field.

_He can’t breathe_ , Hanzo tried to say without words even though he logically knew that Mercy’s technology didn’t work like that.

The click he had felt and the gentle magnetic tugging was her gliding over at a faster speed than if she sprinted. A heartbeat later she was at his side with a golden “leash” hooking to McCree’s shoulder.

“He can’t breathe,” he told Mercy urgently as McCree flopped around.

To his surprise, Mercy cursed. “Did you take off his chestplate?”

“I opened the latches,” he said as she thrust her staff into his hands.

He was used to such things and found the controls to keep the golden “leash” on McCree. Sometimes Mercy decided that she needed to work hands-on and nobody nearby was qualified, so they all learned very quickly the basics on working the healing beam of her staff.

“We need to get him to the ship,” she told Hanzo urgently as she—much to his surprise—closed up his chestplate. “As fast as we can. Almost everyone else is already there.”

She gave him a pointed look and he nodded, handing her back her staff. Digging in her hip pouch, she pulled out a powerful biotic that she only used when things went very, very wrong. This she activated and clipped to Hanzo’s weapon belt. She looped his bow around her narrow shoulders, hooking them around her wings so that it wouldn’t be lost.

With a deep breath, Hanzo knelt and lifted McCree in his arms. He realized very quickly that it wouldn’t work—he couldn’t see in front of him and McCree’s weight would unbalance him and cause him to trip. Gritting his teeth, he shifted McCree into a fireman’s carry and nodded at Mercy.

The beam from her staff turned blue and clicked to him. Static filled his ears even as strength filled his limbs.

With Mercy behind and above him, gliding like a kite while tethered to him while she filled his veins and muscles with strength and endurance, he began to run and tried not to imagine that he felt McCree’s life slipping away.

* * *

“Please respect his privacy,” Mercy said firmly as she closed the doors in everyone’s faces.

“Come on,” Soldier: 76 said gruffly, grabbing Hanzo by the elbow. He would have been amused to find that the old soldier’s hand could barely close around his arm, but all he could think about were McCree’s wheezing breaths as he ran.

He couldn’t afford to synch his breaths to McCree’s as he ran, but each rattling wheeze squeezed his heart tight. Mercy must have “read” something from his vitals because her blue beam occasionally switched to gold as he ran, but he didn’t know for sure.

McCree’s wheezing would haunt his dreams as relentlessly as Genji’s blood on his hands.

“Give Mercy some room to breathe,” Soldier: 76 continued, unaware that his casual words cut worse than he would ever know. “In the meantime, let’s get you cleaned up. You have an extra change of clothes, right?”

D.Va overheard and, likely needing her own distraction, ran to his locker and pulled out his bag. They all had multiple sets of clothes kept neatly stored on the Orca.

Just in case.

Soldier: 76 tugged and pushed him toward the small wash racks and Tracer appeared briefly to throw a towel at him. She snatched it out of the air before it hit him and instead gave it to Soldier: 76 who nodded once in thanks.

It wasn’t until Soldier: 76 threatened to scrub him down himself if he must that Hanzo moved into the tiny wash racks. Even in his addled state Hanzo knew that Soldier: 76 would never really do such a thing, but that he felt the need to threaten it was enough to make Hanzo finally act.

There was a lot of blood soaked and ground into his skin. His clothes, soaked in blood from the Heavy, from the Assassin, _from McCree_ were dumped in a biohazard bag. He hoped that they would be burned—he never wanted to see them again.

Hanzo washed quickly, body still on autopilot. There wasn’t a lot of water to shower with on the Orca, and he didn’t want to be greedy. Not that he ever took too long to shower or bathe—that was a luxury that had been beaten out of him a long time ago.

But McCree had been slowly breaking him of it.

Hanzo’s hands stilled and the cool water drummed on his back of his head. How often had they both indulged in quiet vices—how often had McCree dragged Hanzo away from working himself into exhaustion to take a break? In a small Icelandic town whose name that neither of them could say without making the locals laugh McCree had pulled him into a sauna to steam blood and soot and—Hanzo privately thought—a good amount of their guilt out.

McCree hadn’t been able to stand the heat for very long, only about fifteen minutes, but he had waited outside, sitting on the other side of the wall from Hanzo so that they could both talk. He had complained the entire time about his decision to wear a shirt into the sauna, which had stuck the cotton to his chest like glue and made it heavy and uncomfortable.

They had compared hot springs and saunas in other parts of the world they had visited; they had also, by unspoken agreement, not talked about New Mexico or Japan.

There had been something quietly indulgent in that moment. The varnished wood slick against his back, the steam making the world become hazy. Knowing that just beyond the wall at his back, McCree sat there, braving the cold air in obscene amounts of coats and blankets just to keep him company.

It was especially in moments like that, when McCree went above and beyond for someone that was little more than someone with whom to scratch an itch, that Hanzo remembered how deeply he cared for McCree. It was those quiet moments that made him ache and wish, even for the briefest of moments, that McCree knew how he felt and reciprocated those terrible, wonderful feelings.

Those quiet moments, when Hanzo had finally left the sauna to find McCree waiting for him in the changing room with a branch and a handful of snow—claiming that that was what the locals did, _it’s tradition, Hanzo!_ —that he wished that he could just have greeted McCree with a kiss as if that was the most normal thing in the world.

And now, McCree was lying on the operating table, wheezing for breath, and Hanzo was washing his blood off.

The water had long since run clean of red but he thought that he could still see it. Still…

The panel in the wash racks beeped and he glanced at it. He was nearing his allotment of water—and by Hanzo’s own standards, he had languished enough. His skin prickled with gooseflesh as he left the small stall and used the towel that Tracer had brought and pulled on the clothes that D.Va had fetched and walked out to find Soldier: 76, still in his tactical gear, waiting for him. Soldier: 76’s only concession that the fight was over, and his only change out of his tactical gear, was that he changed out of his featureless visor that covered his whole face in favor of a visor that only covered half of his face.

“You’re clean, at least,” Soldier: 76 said gruffly. “Come on. Let’s get some food into you. We have another half hour before we reach base and I know that you need the energy.”

He dragged Hanzo to a nearby table which D.Va had filled with MREs and assorted snacks. It seemed that she, much like Hanzo, needed something to do, given the way that she was rearranging paper plates and napkins and the angles of bamboo chopsticks and plastic sporks.

This wasn’t the first time she’d seen someone so grievously hurt—because of her relative youth, it was easy to forget that she’d been in battle before. She had seen people hurt and dying and dead; she had been in Hanzo’s position before, wondering if she had been carrying someone to rescue only to have them die shortly after.

And here he was, wallowing in his misery, when she was just as worried for McCree as he was. Perhaps for different reasons, perhaps with different feelings attached, but she was worrying all the same.

Soldier: 76 sat them both down and portioned out food for them. “There’s nothing that will be solved with worrying,” he told them firmly, but there was understanding in his gruff voice. “All we can do is wait and have faith in Mercy.”

He hadn’t been there to see the look of worry cross Mercy’s face when he said that he had opened McCree’s chestplate. He hadn’t seen the way her hands shook as she closed it up again, hadn’t seen the look in her eyes when she said that they had to carry him back to the ship as fast as possible.

But Soldier: 76 had been through a lot—he’d buried friends, lovers, subordinates. He’d held their hands as they died, had made empty promises that they’ll be fine. He’d been the one to make it there just too late but just early enough to watch their last moments.

If anyone would understand, it was him.

And…he was right. What good would he do if he fainted from the exertion of summoning and controlling the dragons? All that would accomplish was distraction and a waste of supplies.

So he ate with D.Va and pretended to rest under Soldier: 76’s understanding eye as he waited with his heart in his throat for news.

* * *

Almost before they had fully landed, Mercy rushed McCree to Medical where her assistant was waiting; Lúcio had been instructed to make sure that everyone else hadn’t been too badly injured while away.

Hanzo almost didn’t hear him as he spoke and asked perfunctory questions. He was scanned for a concussion and instructed to drink plenty of water, to not drink or smoke for 24 hours, and make sure he ate regularly. Lúcio pulled him from the roster for those 24 hours plus an additional 12 for good measure. Not that it affected anything—Winston wouldn’t deploy Hanzo again anytime soon, if only because jobs that required his skills were just that slow.

At dinner, Mercy’s assistant told them that McCree would be alright, but he wasn’t allowed visitors for the next few days while he recovered. He took with him two plates heaped high with food and left despite their questions.

“Angelo’s no fun,” Mei said with the loose humor of someone that had just heard relieving news. Her cheeks were rosy as she smiled. “But I’m glad that he’s okay. I heard he was thrown into a wall?”

Now with the understanding that McCree was alright, talk flowed more freely. Tracer exclaimed, with much hand-waving, how a Heavy had shown up and backhanded McCree into a column. “Like a flea!” she cried as everyone laughed.

Hanzo only barely heard her. Genji told a story about the last time they had encountered a Heavy in Blackwatch. He exclaimed, as everyone laughed their worries away, that McCree had thought that he was hot shit and had gotten thrown thirty feet away. When he had cried for a medic, Moira had taken her time meandering over to help him, pausing dramatically to look at the architecture and comment on the posters hanging by the museum. Finally reaching him, she activated the stream of biotics in her arms and had sprayed him directly in the face.

“It didn’t hurt,” Genji said as everyone laughed. “But it was really annoying! And apparently someone had tried to prank her—it wasn’t us, really!—and put glitter in her canisters. So the rest of the night, he was covered in glitter!”

Hanzo bowed out, claiming that he was tired, and walked out to the comm towers where he could stare out over the water. In the distance, he heard a boat’s horn. He watched the sunset, which looked far too red for comfort, and came to a decision.

* * *

It was disturbingly easy to sneak into Medical. There were no cameras nearby—at least any that worked—and the window to the wards was open. If he had been in any other state of mind he would have been suspicious of it but instead he took it as a boon and climbed inside.

McCree lay, unnaturally still on the medical bed with the blankets tucked up to his armpits. There were a handful of tubes leading to him with other monitoring devices hooked up.

He was, Hanzo was disturbed to learn, still in his chestplate.

“Pay up.”

Hanzo whirled and found Angela and her assistant (whose name he really should learn) sitting on one of the medical berths tucked in a dark corner. She was tucked into one of her assistant’s big arms and was smiling smugly, holding both of their mugs as he dug in his pocket for a rolled piece of paper.

Seeing Hanzo looking, Mercy’s assistant unrolled the paper to reveal an old piece of Monopoly money. “I bet her a fiver that you’d show up later. If you had waited half an hour I would have won.”

“Sit down,” Mercy said as she traded her assistant a mug of something steaming for the fake money. She waved it at Hanzo between two fingers. “It keeps us from betting our life away.” With a groan, she set down her cup on the side table beside the medical berth and got to her feet. Only then did Hanzo notice the small pot situated on an electric burner plugged into the wall. There was a mug tucked behind it which she filled with the mixture in the pot, and then with amber liquid from a bottle that she pulled out of the wide pockets of her coat.

“Sit,” she repeated, gesturing to one of the empty plastic visitor chairs as she handed him the mug. “Join us.”

“Dr. Ziegler—” he began and she waved it off.

“Pay up,” her assistant said and with a scowl, she handed him a different bill. “She thought you’d call her ‘Mercy’.”

Hanzo felt as if he had been swept into an alternate dimension. He took the mug, which he found was filled with cocoa, and sat down as instructed. “Lúcio said that I shouldn’t drink for 24 hours.”

“Good thing I didn’t see you pour alcohol in there,” the assistant told him with a wink.

“It’s not like you listen to the medics anyway,” Mercy told him without heat and sat down. “You have questions about McCree’s condition,” she said in a more business-like tone.

He looked down at the mug and the steam curling from the surface. It was hot cocoa, he realized. With cinnamon and chili—something that McCree made often. He swallowed hard and tried to ignore this realization. “It’s none of my business,” he said. “And I would never ask you to…divulge such personal information. I just…”

Hanzo hesitated. He “just” what? Needed to see McCree like he needed to breathe? Needed to reassure himself that McCree was still alive? That he hadn’t died alone and forgotten?

“You like him,” the assistant said.

“Angelo,” Mercy hissed.

The assistant—apparently named Angelo—flapped a hand at Mercy. A few of his white dreadlocks, shockingly bright against his dark skin, fell forward in front of his face. “It’s okay to have feelings, Hanzo,” he said with such aching kindness that Hanzo looked away. “It’s not unnatural!”

“It’s not that,” Hanzo said and sipped his cocoa. It reminded him of nights tucked against McCree on the comms tower and a night of camping with the team.

The camping memory hadn’t really been a pleasant one—they had been stranded without evac in the taiga around the Koyukuk River. They had all gathered around a large campfire and had pooled their resources (and skills) for a meager dinner of unseasoned, roast meat which Tracer claimed was better than what was made at base because it wasn’t so spicy.

Then, with the smell of pine trees and the cold wind in their noses, McCree had pulled out a thermos of spiced hot cocoa with chili and cinnamon that they had all shared, sitting so close to the fire that their clothes smoked.

Hanzo sighed, breath making the steam swirl around the rim of the mug.

“He cares for you,” Angelo said gently. “And I’ve won money off of the times he’s snuck in to visit you. Or tried to.”

Hanzo shook his head. “It’s not like that.”

“I swear,” Mercy said. “You two are the base’s worst-kept secret. I’m surprised that you two keep sneaking around. Everyone knows.”

On one hand, she could be sincere; but he had also seen and heard how often they apparently made bets with each other. So he said, somewhat truthfully, “There is nothing between us.”

Angelo shook his head. “If there is nothing between you, then why are you here?”

Hanzo’s mouth went dry. He took a long sip of his cocoa and enjoyed the burn of spices and chili. “I was worried for him,” Hanzo said at last.

Both medics traded disbelieving glances but seemed to drop it. When Mercy sighed, she seemed much more tired. “If we hadn’t gotten to him when we did, he might not have made it,” she said softly. “That was the closest we’d ever cut it.”

“The closest?” Hanzo echoed faintly.

Mercy tapped her chest with the knuckles of one of her hands, which Hanzo took to mean McCree’s chestplate. “I can heal broken bones and torn flesh,” she said ruefully. “We can do all form of medical miracles that would have absolutely been _impossible_ ten, fifteen, _thirty_ years ago. But…” she gestured helplessly. “There are some things that can’t easily be cured or fixed. Whatever was done to him.” Again, she tapped the middle of her chest with her knuckles and Hanzo’s stomach sank further into his heels in dread. “Whatever happened, is irreparable. At least in any way that I can fix.”

Angelo sighed and ran a hand through his white dreads. He fiddled with the one, which was tipped with a bead; from the lack of any other decoration, it had been one that he missed when taking them out of his hair. “It’s hard,” he said, likely misinterpreting whatever he had seen in Hanzo’s expression. “We’re not… Ange is a surgeon, but she needs a _team_ of specialists, something that we just don’t have. _I’m_ just an ER doc—emergency medicine, which is perfect for here. Basic surgeries are fine, but anything to do with veins and hearts and brains? About all I’m good for is handing people tools.”

Slowly, Hanzo turned to look at McCree. He swallowed around a dry mouth and took a slow sip of his cocoa. It warmed him but nothing would melt the icy knot in his chest. “His chestplate was damaged,” he remembered. “That badly?”

Mercy sighed and took a long drink from her mug. When she put it down, she spooned more cocoa into it and melted into her chair. “That badly,” she agreed. “Fortunately, we always keep a bunch of spares lying around. If not for those, we might have lost him.”

It was only with great effort that Hanzo didn’t ask every question that bubbled to his lips. Most importantly, he wondered, _is that why he ran? Why he was always running?_

The thought _hurt_ like a knife to the ribs. Worse, like the knife was twisted, the edges grating against bone as it turned. It scraped against his heart, picked against the icy knot in his chest and he hoped that it wouldn’t burst so that he’d have to deal with the shame of explaining why he had broken down like that.

So he wouldn’t explain why he hurt so much to people that didn’t need to know that he didn’t know how to compartmentalize the one thing he really should have. Why it felt like the worst kind of betrayal to have turned McCree away the way he had—never mind that it had been for _very valid_ reasons, never mind that he had always given McCree the opportunity to explain himself, to allow them both to talk it out like responsible fucking adults.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked when he could be sure that his voice would be clear. “I’m sure it goes against doctor-patient confidentiality.” Especially with Hanzo, Dr. Ziegler was a stickler for protocol. He couldn’t say that he blamed her, though.

They both gave him a strange look. Then Angelo shook his head, handing Mercy his mug as he uncurled to his full height. Once upon a time the sight of Angelo’s big muscles bulging against his garishly colored scrubs would’ve had him looking the doctor up and down but now it felt too much like cheating on a relationship that he didn’t have, no longer hand, _would_ never have.

Angelo moved quickly for such a big, bulky man, and as quiet as Genji did when he felt like being a little shit; Hanzo jumped when Angelo seemed to appear at his side with a clipboard and a form in McCree’s distinctive cursive.

For a moment as Hanzo took the clipboard, his eyes traced the neat curls and letters. McCree only wrote in cursive when nobody was looking; every other time he played up the “unwashed felon cowboy” persona and wrote in something that looked more like a flock of birds had scrambled over the page. Sometimes he was too good at pretending and couldn’t even read his own handwriting.

But each note he ever left for Hanzo was in that neat, textbook cursive.

Angelo pointed at the words at the top of the page. “We like to remind people to actually _tell_ people they’re signing up for this.”

Again, Hanzo’s mouth went dry and that cold knot of ice in his chest cracked and threatened to shatter. The form was dated a week before, occurring after their…fight.

“We ask you to fill these out quarterly,” Angelo reminded Hanzo needlessly, as if it wasn’t an Event on base where Medical literally chased everyone down to fill out paperwork. Genji said that it was a “tradition” from before the fall of Overwatch; Hanzo felt like it was pointless and always submitted himself without argument to fill out five fields of data and sign his name.

It seemed ridiculous to have to fill it out so often, but Genji always shrugged and wouldn’t answer when he asked and McCree would bluntly say that it was because in the Old Days during the Crisis, the people on the forms might be alive one quarter and dead the next.

Hanzo’s eyes traced the cursive signature. It was an information release form. In the event of serious injury or death, the person—or, occasionally, people—on the form were allowed to receive personal information. Each person could choose how much information would be shared, but McCree’s form indicated that Mercy and Angelo could tell him _everything_.

His eyes traced McCree’s signature once more, then the date. Then he met Angelo’s eyes and held the clipboard out again. “Tell me everything,” he said. “Especially…tell me about his chestplate.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With apologies to the real Suheily whose name I stole. You are a sweet and lovely person; it was just bad luck that you happened to call me when I was struggling for a name.

It only felt natural to fall into Hanzo’s orbit.

It was like taking a deep breath after being underwater for a long time.

At first, he wanted to hate him. He tried to remember the bloody, pulpy mess that had been Genji when McCree had found him dying in a dark and dingy alley. He tried to remember that Genji had lost more limbs to gangrene and sepsis from that very alley than from any cut of Hanzo’s blade.

But Hanzo was  _ handsome _ —and more than that, there was a haunting in his eyes that matched McCree’s. As if the ghosts of his pasts, the wailing and screaming of the ghosts of those he’d killed harmonized with his own.

If he believed in anything as concrete as Destiny, as soulmates and “meant to be”, he’d think that Hanzo, in some ways, might be his.

Then again, Ashe had always said that he was a romantic at heart. 

It was only natural to fall into Hanzo, and yet it was the biggest leap of faith he’d ever taken. Kissing Hanzo was as easy as breathing, which was almost funny because kissing Hanzo was like choking on nothing. Letting him wrap his arms around him, feeling his touch against his unprotected back and sides, made his head spin.

Or perhaps that was just the lack of oxygen, his vital organs approaching the failure limits without his chestplate.

He’d always known that letting Suheily in would come to bite him in the ass. Until that moment, until he saw Hanzo’s dark bedroom eyes and that wicked smile of his, he’d thought that he’d learned to live with the worst of it. The occasional ache, the burn of it in the winter, the occasional chafing around the... _ site _ . He’d thought it was difficult enough to deflect questions about why he always wore his chestplate, or why he always favored loose clothing.

But Hanzo…the thought of looking Hanzo in his dark, regal eyes and telling him that he was stupid enough to let a doctor whose medical license had been revoked for questionable practices operate, was too much. At the time it seemed like a good idea—it was let Suheily operate, or die; and McCree wanted to  _ live _ .

Not to mention, he half expected to die during the procedure. It sounded too far-fetched, too much like science fiction to work.

And yet, here he was, without his chestplate, _ feeling _ his organs struggle to keep him alive,  _ feeling _ his lungs start to shut down like a vice clamping around them. From bitter experience, he knew that he had five more minutes; five more minutes to make it count.

Hanzo was beautiful beneath him, his hair splayed out over the pillows and his head tilted back. He wasn’t looking at McCree as his strong fingers pressed bruises into his arms, his neatly-trimmed nails drawing bright red furrows down his back.

When Ange saw them she’d give him a  _ look _ , but better a Look from her than hours of teasing from Angelo.

It was hard to decide if he was breathless from Hanzo’s biting, demanding kisses or because he was literally about to be at death’s doorstep. Running from Hanzo  _ hurt _ , as if it was physically paining him to step away, but it’d hurt a lot more if he died. Still, he couldn’t help but stare from the doorway, committing the sight to memory.

Even if it was ruined somewhat by the tragic expression on Hanzo’s face. Perhaps it was untrue, perhaps it was just wishful thinking, but he thought that he could read Hanzo’s micro expressions much better than anyone else on the team, even Genji. What he saw now, the despair, the  _ hurt _ , cut him nearly as much as Suheily’s knife had.

He said something—he couldn’t hear it over the rush of blood in his ears, the dizziness threatening to render him unconscious right there on the floor—but turned and ran.

Like a fucking coward.

The first breath he took after putting his chestplate back on and making the connections was almost rapturous; the second was full of sorrow, his lungs squeezing now with guilt, not the failure of his own body and his stupid fucking life choices.

That night was among the most difficult nights he’d ever spent, even counting the time that he was stuck outside in a blizzard with no evac and no shelter. A long sleep wouldn’t solve this issue, wouldn’t soothe the ache in his heart when he thought of that stricken look on Hanzo’s face as he ran away.

What he wouldn’t give to have stayed, to hold Hanzo close and see if he’d be kicked out. If it was just a romp in the sheets, that was one thing, but at least he could maybe get a round 2 if he was lucky. But then, if it was  _ just _ sex for Hanzo, he wouldn’t have worn such a surprised, hurt expression.

At some point it had become more than just sex for him. Not that they  _ had _ sex before. It had been approached like it was just a casual thing, had proceeded like it was a casual thing, and then…well, it turned out that McCree thought that he might be in love with Hanzo.

It was natural to fall into his orbit, to fall into Hanzo with everything he was.

Well, not  _ everything _ ; because how do you tell someone that as a kid you were stupid, so unbelievable stupid, that you let a doc like Suheily cut you up and replace your parts with tin cans? How did you tell someone that the lights and tubes on your chestplate  _ kept you alive _ ?

The doctors at Overwatch, the best of the best, all were baffled by what Suheily had done but they at least were able to predict certain things. Chafing at the site of the prosthesis and ports, cardiac arrest if he went too long without it, ache in the cold and a weakening of his sternum and ribs where Suheily,  _ fucking _ Suheily, had taken hedge trimmers to them.

They did nothing to prepare him for how to actually broach the topic with anyone. He’d lost count of how many times an eager expression turned pitying; those times he’d wished that he’d told the fucking doc “no”. He’d wished that he hadn’t still been under when Overwatch hit the Deadlock Gang.

They’d saved him, thinking that he could help—especially when they realized that it was him, one of the founders of the new branch. But the joke was on them; the drugs that Suheily and Jackson had loaded him up with fucked up his head too. It took him weeks to remember his name; months to even remember Ashe’s face, much less her name.

All the while, Suheily’s name was branded on his heart. If that motherfucker hadn’t been locked up, hadn’t been killed by a fellow inmate, he would’ve paid her a very special visit.

The hurt in Hanzo’s face, though…that cut differently. The despair and, before he turned away, the  _ resignation _ …God he never wanted to see that look on Hanzo’s face again. It cut deeper than any physical wound he’d ever had, and that’s when he knew that he was in too fucking deep. If that one look hurt so much, how deeper would his  _ pity _ cut?

The empty ceiling had no answers for him.

* * *

Holding his hat to his chest and feeling strangely cowed in a way he hadn’t since he was nine, McCree watched Hanzo in the firing range. Hanzo sat with his legs splayed, the long muzzle of his bolt-action rifle resting on a stand as he sighed and sighed into every shot. 

It was easy to forget that Hanzo was scarily proficient in  _ all _ manner of weapons, not just his bow. Yet here was the evidence, once more right in front of him. If he didn’t feel so guilty that he was nauseous, he would probably be turned on. 

He knew that Hanzo knew that he was there, too. It was in the minute shift of his head when McCree entered, then in the way that he breathed out a little harder when he fired his next shot; he worked the bolt a fraction of a second faster than he had previously and McCree stopped a safe distance away. 

When Hanzo didn’t speak, he struggled to find words. “I heard that you’re pulled from the field,” he said lamely, and of all of the dumb fucking things to say, why was it  _ that _ ? Why not  _ I’m sorry _ , or  _ please let me explain _ ? 

Hanzo took a deep, meditative breath; he held it, sighting down the barrel, and breathed out as he gently squeezed the trigger. “Yes,” Hanzo said as he worked the bolt and reloaded. 

His gun, much like his bow, was nearly an anachronism in and of itself. It didn’t accept magazines and needed to be loaded by hand; Hanzo had once told him that he had found it in an old antique shop and had slowly brought it back from a hell of gathering dust on someone’s wall into working order. Hanzo could never trust it enough to take it into the field but for a long meditative session like this, it was perfect. 

Hanzo loved the damn thing nearly as much as he loved his bow and McCree’s clockwork heart always did little flip-flops whenever he saw it in Hanzo’s hands. 

Now he watched Hanzo work the gun and fire, lost in the smooth movements of Hanzo’s muscles, the rock of his body as he breathed and fired. He found himself wondering what it would feel like to be touched the way that Hanzo loved this damn gun. Then he realized that Hanzo had always touched him with such reverence—it was McCree that hadn’t wanted to accept it. 

And...it was more than reverence. 

McCree swallowed around the lump in his throat. Those terrible moments, those heart-wrenching looks of despair and grief that McCree had seen in Hanzo’s face those many times he’d run away weren’t what he had thought. Hanzo had laid himself bare in those few heartbeats and McCree, like the colossal fucking idiot he was had chosen to not look. 

“Are you mad at me?” he found himself asking.

He watched Hanzo slap the button to bring the paper target in. The winch groaned as it reeled the target in and McCree watched Hanzo snatch it up to inspect it critically. It was impossible to tell how many times Hanzo had fired into it; there was only a single circle in the very middle of the target’s silhouetted head. 

When Hanzo turned, McCree felt like a rodent pinned beneath the gaze of a hawk. After Suheily, after Ashe, he had promised himself that he would never again be so helpless. Yet here he was, too stupid to do anything but think with his dick when it came to Hanzo.

And it came back to bite him in the ass because good  _ God _ , he loved that man. The realization made his chest hurt as if his chestplate had failed. 

“What do you want, McCree?”

He swallowed. “I wanted to apologize.” 

Hanzo’s dark eyes hardened into stones that cut. “That’s not what I meant,” Hanzo said harshly and McCree hated that he flinched beneath the words. Hanzo had every fucking right to hate him, had every fucking right to be  _ furious. _ “What do you want with  _ us _ , McCree? Do you want sex? Or did you want something else?” 

Just like with every shot of rifle or bow, Hanzo’s question hit the bull’s eye. But to answer it directly, to talk words of love and devotion that he now knew would never be returned—because he knew he fucked up.  _ God _ , he knew he fucked up. More than anything, he wanted to say those words.  _ I love you _ .  _ I want you, all of you _ . 

But to say those words, would be to say the  _ other _ ones.

To talk of love and share those intimate truths with him would mean saying  _ my guts are mechanical _ ; would mean explaining that a psychopath with a scalpel and a God complex had rooted around in there and pretending to be a doctor from a superhero comic, had turned everything to tech. That Suheily’s touch was a poison that would linger with him for the rest of his unnatural life; that he could never hold Hanzo close without digging the uncomfortable edges of his chestplate into Hanzo’s soft skin. 

Hanzo was not without his scars, some of which had been given by the point of Genji’s blade, but he couldn’t  _ possibly _ be expected to handle McCree’s. 

“I thought that you would ask me about why I hurt you,” McCree said lamely, struggling for words. It was true, he realized—even though he hadn’t allowed himself to consciously acknowledge it, a part of him had been preparing for this moment. To apologize, yes—but also to say the words that he never knew how to speak. 

It was worse than trying to admit that he loved Hanzo; or perhaps they just went hand-in-hand. A risk that he was never sure was worth taking. Because rejection was one thing; pity cut deeper than anything that Suheily could have possibly tainted. 

“What does it matter?” he asked weakly and as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew it was the exact wrong thing to say. 

But as B.O.B. used to always sign to him,  _ words spoken can never be unsaid _ , and no matter how much McCree wanted to claw them back and swallow them again, that was impossible. 

Something like rage crossed Hanzo’s face. His eyes glittered with blue lights that McCree was certain he never knew he produced. The dragons, probably, reacting to their host; Genji used to do it in Blackwatch sometimes, too. 

“It matters to me,” Hanzo said through gritted teeth. They seemed sharper, as if the dragons were trying to speak through him, to let McCree know of their fury. “Because I am invested in us—whatever ‘we’ may be. Friends, lovers, or something more. Maybe just friends with benefits, something to do to take the edge off.” He held up his wrist and McCree’s eyes were drawn painfully to the smears of purple and yellow and red pressed into his skin. “If we’re nothing, then we’re nothing and that’s the end of it. If we’re not—if we’re friends or more or  _ whatever _ —I need to know what I’m working with.”

It hurt to look at, to know that  _ he _ had done that to Hanzo. He’d known that Ange hadn’t healed it—Angelo had told him that much—but the reminder, selfish as it was, about broke McCree’s mechanical heart. 

Without realizing that he was doing it, McCree put his hat aside. It missed the table and fell, clicking against the ground, but that didn’t matter because Hanzo was letting him this close, was letting him so gently cradle that strong arm, touch the swollen injuries that he had put there. If his heart wasn’t fucked up, he thought that it would have skipped a few beats. 

_ He _ had done this. 

Until that moment, he hadn’t realized that it was possible to be so horrified, so grief-stricken that tears would not fall. 

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he whispered, running his hands over those swollen marks “I just…” it was now or never. Just...say it. Blurt it out. Fucking  _ word vomit _ . Hanzo would understand, surely. 

But looking into those cold, stone-sharp eyes, McCree’s resolve crumbled. 

“You scared me,” he said lamely. It was painful in its inadequacy. 

“If it’s trauma,” Hanzo gritted out. “For something as innocuous as putting my hands under your shirt, then perhaps I should be aware of this.” 

He was right and McCree wanted to tell him, or wanted the  _ idea  _ of telling him. More than anything, McCree wanted to open his mouth and have the words come out as if unbidden, or wanted to open a book to a page and have  _ it _ tell Hanzo. 

“It’s...an old injury,” McCree said, still acting against himself even now. Self preservation that allowed him to live but at what cost? “It...makes me react. Poorly.” 

It hurt like a physical pain to feel Hanzo pull his hand away. The warmth left behind by his touch cooled too quickly and made McCree feel even more bereft. “If I cannot trust you to tell me about something that you are aware of—about something that you  _ know _ will force you to lash out—then how can I trust you with anything else?”

“I was scared,” McCree said feebly and felt crushed beneath the weight of that inadequacy. “I…Han, you  _ know _ that I would  _ never _ hurt you on purpose. Not…”

“It wasn’t on purpose,” Hanzo conceded and McCree didn’t dare to hold his breath; the other shoe was about to drop. “But it was no accident by virtue of us not properly communicating. I accept partial responsibility in that but…you need to tell me. So I ask you once more: what is this? What are  _ we _ ? And how can I know that something like this—you deliberately withholding information from me that might result in our injury or trauma—won’t happen again?”

He had no answer to that and wished more than once that he wasn’t such a fucking coward; that Hanzo could read the answers in his eyes. He wished that when he closed his eyes, he couldn’t remember with terrible clarity all of those pitying looks. The doctors, every partner—professional, romantic, sexual—he had ever tried to tell the truth to. 

_ Oh, you poor thing _ , their eyes would say. Or, for a select few,  _ wow, you’re really a special kind of stupid _ . Reyes was one of the latter, who had always looked at him like he expected McCree to have done something stupid since the last time he was watching him. 

Hanzo had that second look down pat; he often seemed to be giving it to the team, even though McCree knew that that wasn’t his intention. How much more would it hurt for  _ that _ look to come from Hanzo, who had his heart and didn’t know it?

“This is why you don’t stay behind,” Hanzo realized and McCree barely suppressed his full-body flinch. At the same time, he felt hope rise in his throat. Did Hanzo know? Did he suspect? “Why you’ve  _ never _ stayed behind. This wasn’t just about the other day—this has been  _ months _ .”

There was something accusatory in those words. “I thought you’d ask,” McCree protested. “I—”

“Because me asking is easier than you volunteering the information,” Hanzo hissed. His eyes sparked brighter. 

McCree had never seen anything so beautiful; he didn’t remember anything hurting as much as watching Hanzo turn away and begin to pack away his things. He stood there, memorizing every line, every movement, ingraining all of it in his memory. 

A few times, he opened his mouth to blurt it out.  _ Wait, Hanzo, I can explain _ . But each time he never knew what to say.

What  _ does _ one say?

_ It was Suheily _ ? But it was McCree that had agreed. 

_ I was dumb _ . He still was. 

_ They did something to me _ . Fool that he was, he didn’t even know fully what had happened. There were still gaps in his memory, so he didn’t even know what exactly Suheily had promised. It was survival, though. He remembered Ashe and Suheily talking to him about it. 

Lord knows if that was true. 

He chose to believe that it was, because he wasn’t sure that he could handle the truth of knowing that he was really that fucking stupid to accept any other reason. 

And so he watched Hanzo leave, his eyes lingering on the lurid bruises around his wrists.  _ He _ had done that; and like the damn metal case around his chest, he’d have to live with it for the rest of his too-long life. 

* * *

Seeing Hanzo hurt.

All he could think about were the words trapped in his throat and the ones that he was too chicken shit to say. All he could think about were those dark bruises around Hanzo’s wrists, of the swelling and the knowledge that  _ he _ had done that.

It felt like another nail in his cross.

Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how much of a self-flagellating mood he had fallen into—it was unavoidable to see Hanzo, given how close their team was and how close their schedules overlapped. They had the same training time and the same mealtimes, had similar habits and vices. When assigned, they were often in the same group because of their ability to work almost seamlessly together, as if they shared the same thoughts.

But now, in light of what happened, McCree wasn’t surprised to find their scores dropping.

It wasn’t by a lot, thank goodness, but it was enough that anyone that knew the parties involved knew that it was a serious issue. Their scores, where they had once steadily climbed, plateaued; a few dropped. At least it was only by a point or two, or McCree would feel that much more useless.

Still.

Winston, bless his damn heart, switched them into different groups. It was another hit to McCree’s pride because it meant that Winston had seen the numbers and had acted accordingly. He often forgot the human element, was often consumed only with numbers—it simply wouldn’t occur to him that there was anything wrong with  _ McCree and Hanzo _ , that there was anything that had come up between them. All he saw was that the numbers had changed and he tried to act accordingly.

The team, though…they could all see it, plain as day. They were guarded around Hanzo—monkey see, monkey do—but with McCree, they were less reserved. According to their natures, of course. Reinhardt, Ana, and Hana watched them like characters in their damn soap operas; Genji watched them with a strange mixture of exasperation, worry, and annoyance. It was hard to tell what Zaryanova or Zenyatta felt, but the former’s hard eyes were always on them as if trying to piece them together and Zenyatta hardly seemed to notice, though McCree knew that was not the case. Lena talked quickly in their presence as if by her words alone she could clear the air between them, and Brigitte’s own chattiness seemed more desperate to distract them from…whatever it was between them.

Everyone knew; they were the team’s worst-kept secret.

It didn’t make anything easier, didn’t make it more bearable to see Hanzo’s challenging, pleading looks.  _ Give me a reason _ , his eyes always seemed to beg.

Problem was, Hanzo meant for McCree to give him a reason to forgive him; all McCree could see in his eyes was  _ give me a reason to pity you more _ . It was all in his head.

He knew that communication was key—Hanzo had hit the nail on the head in the range.

He knew that Hanzo deserved to know.

He knew that he was too much of a coward to say anything.

So whatever-it-was that was between them festered like a wound gone rancid and those  _ give me a reason to forgive you _ looks turned cold before they stopped altogether.

* * *

“Paperwork!” Genji cried. “Run!”

Ana leaped out of a window; Reinhardt moved faster than his age and bulk would imply and disappeared through the doors into the gardens outside. Giggling like a child, Genji and Brigitte dashed away, and Lena Recalled away in a flash of blue light.

“I really fucking hate this practice,” Angelo said and crossed his arms, frowning imperiously down at McCree who sipped his coffee at the table. He was an imposing sight, broad-shouldered and tall, but McCree had sat through worse—Hanzo and Reyes included—so he only gave the assistant medic a casual shrug.

“I don’t blame you,” McCree said. “Do you want to do this here or in Medical?”

Angelo slapped the clipboard on the table in front of McCree with more force than was necessary. “Here,” he said. “So you don’t think about sneaking off.”

Though a part of him was almost hurt that Angelo would think so, he knew that it was always a crapshoot whether McCree would give paperwork the slip. Far more often than not, though, he’d just submit. It was faster and easier that way.

And Angela wouldn’t smack him the next time he was in to deal with the damn tin can around his chest. McCree supposed that he deserved that and more.

So he bent his head and filled out the paperwork without looking. The answers, for the past two years, have always been the same.

Angelo grunted when he finished, snatched the paperwork and pen out of McCree’s hands, and stomped off. He shoved the clipboard and pen at Zaryanova next, who also grunted and obligingly filled it out. With a last baleful stare at them, Angelo stomped off.

“He needs a vacation,” Zaryanova said when they were both sure that the assistant medic was (probably) out of earshot. “Or to get laid.”

McCree snorted. “Why, are you volunteering?”

The big Russian woman wrinkled her nose. “Not my type. And I am not his.”

Sighing, McCree took another long drink of his coffee. “I think Ange needs a vacation too,” he said. “But she probably thinks that we’d all get ourselves killed if she takes even a day off.”

Zaryanova gave a low, deep laugh. “Is she wrong?” She was smiling when McCree looked up at her. When his eyes met hers, she winked.

Laughing, McCree toasted her with his half-empty mug. “Not at all.”

She clicked her mug against his with enough force to crack it, sending hot coffee all over the table. Both of them stared at the mess in dismay, then at each other in mute shock; then they broke out in the near-manic laughter of people that were burying something that they didn’t want to discuss.

* * *

It was a decidedly strange feeling to once more be walking down the streets of Rialto, though he supposed that time had a way of changing things. Not to mention, they had done a lot of damage the last time they had been there, more than half a decade ago. Likely a lot of the buildings and facades that he saw were younger than they appeared, repaired or replaced after Assassins, Heavies, and a group of black ops agents had fucked everything up.

Now, in the light of day and with a decidedly different purpose, it felt as if he was in another world.

He wondered if there was a carnival the way that Moira had said the last time they were there. With the accent she had put on the second  _ a _ , he thought that it was probably something more than the usual carnivals he thought of in his half-there, grainy memories of his childhood.

Another relic of his bad choice in letting Suheily and Jackson fuck around with him; another thing that had been taken from him. His mother, his childhood, all of the good memories he had to have had with Ashe.

Hanzo.

But as much as he wanted to blame them for Hanzo, he knew deep down in his clockwork heart that it wasn’t  _ their _ fault that he was too much of a coward to tell Hanzo. They put him on that path to swallow his pride and his fear of pity and talk like a fucking adult.

Thoughts of Hanzo made his chest hurt as if his chestplate was failing. It was a constant ache now, and Angela had told him exactly what she thought of him coming by her office so often to check it out.

_ It’s not your chestplate, you idiot _ , she told him the last time he was there, knocking on the damn thing with her knuckles.  _ It’s your heart—your emotional one, not your literal one. Get your head out of your ass and  _ do _ something about it _ .

Good advice, but she didn’t know just how much of an idiot he was. (She probably did, really—she  _ was _ his primary care physician and knew every stupid thing he’d ever done in his life.) At the same time, he was pretty sure that she had a bet going with Angelo—she always did—and as such, could never tell if she was giving him advice to further her betting or for actual concern over his wellbeing.

At least betting with their neon Monopoly money was better than other vices she and Angelo could be indulging in.

He sighed, hoped he wasn’t too obvious about it, and tried not to look up at the glazed tile rooftops to look for Hanzo.

“You really have it bad,” Soldier: 76 said in an undertone and McCree glanced at him. “You should do something about it.”

“I did,” McCree told him tersely. “Didn’t go well.”

Soldier: 76 grunted. “Bet you half-assed it,” he said and McCree remembered, as he always did, why he had always hated talking to the man. Morrison or Soldier: 76, he was a dick about everything.

“Ain’t none of your business,” McCree informed him and ground his cigarillo between his teeth. “Focus on the task at hand.”

Soldier: 76 grunted again. “I can multitask,” he said.  _ Unlike you _ was left unsaid, but McCree heard it anyway.

“Bugger off, 76,” Lena said as she Blinked back to where they were nursing the payload along. “Stay vigilant—isn’t that what you always tell us?” Before either of them could respond, she Blinked away again, appearing further down the way, peering cautiously into open archways and shops.

“She makes me feel old,” Soldier: 76 grumbled to McCree who grunted in agreement.

“Age is just a number that the government keeps track of,” McCree told him dryly and received a dry stare through the old vigilante’s red visor. “You’re only as old as you act.”

Shaking his head, Soldier: 76 fell behind to walk with Ange, who wouldn’t be more sympathetic but at least wouldn’t immediately start teasing him. McCree felt strangely bereft without him—as much as the old soldier infuriated him, his grumbling at least kept away thoughts of Hanzo.

He resisted the urge to look up at the rooftops again, refusing to wonder if Hanzo had put on sunscreen to protect his pretty skin against the harsh Italian sunlight. It was something that he always teased Hanzo about, and something that nobody had to remind him to do; though scarred, with his stupid broken nose that had healed wrong, he was still surprisingly vain.

And there he went again, thinking of how stupidly pretty Hanzo was. Especially covered in blood, his face flushed and his eyes alight with the blue sparks of his dragons. It always made his clockwork heart beat faster to see him slide down from his perch like a god coming down to earth from the heavens. He wondered if this mission would warrant such an expression as well, or if it would be relatively calm, with very little to do as they escorted the payload uncontested.

As if his traitorous thoughts had summoned it, he heard a too-familiar roar. Memories of the last time he had heard it—just like his last memories of Rialto—nearly made him freeze in place. He brought Peacekeeper up, cocking the revolver, as he heard the sound of tiles moving above them.

An Assassin  _ and _ a Heavy was a tall order, but they’d dealt with worse before.

Kind of.

He tried not to think of the fact that Hanzo would be more or less alone with the Assassin, unless they jumped down. One of these fuckers was dangerous enough, but  _ two _ ?

Behind him, he heard the distinctive sound of Mercy spreading her synthetic wings and taking to the air; above him, he heard the Assassin cackling.

His body moved almost without conscious thought, rolling him out of the way of a hail of bullets. The Heavy roared when a flashbang exploded in their face, stunning them momentarily; they roared again when McCree, Soldier, and Tracer all unloaded on them.

McCree threw himself back, out of the way, as the Heavy swung their big arms around, flailing in their fury. He dodged again, rolling behind a few decorated columns as they opened fire on the place he had just been standing, sending shining granite (marble?? Fucking alabaster? Concrete painted pretty? Fuck if he knew) flying into the air in plumes of white dust.

He wished he could hear how Hanzo was doing, but the Heavy would need to take all of his attention, especially given how close it was to him. It was a terrible place to be and he wondered, quite morbidly, if he would die here before he could ever figure out if he could get his head out of his own ass.

But there was no time for that; the Heavy roared and smashed the columns one by one as McCree reached for another flashbang, counting the seconds down. Now, more than ever, he couldn’t afford any mistakes. Too close and the chance of being shot into a pulpy red mess on the pretty stone ground was incredibly high; too far, and he wouldn’t be able to get the full effect of a flash-bang at point-blank range.

There.

He rolled out of the way as the Heavy smashed the column he was standing behind. It was sloppy and he twisted his ankle, but thank God (or whomever) for battle fever because he barely felt it. The flashbang exploded in the Heavy’s face and Lena leaped in, peppering the Heavy’s thick armor with her pistols as Soldier shot his helix rockets into the seams of their armor where it was weakest.

Problem was, McCree was still  _ right there _ and he needed to be as far away as possible. With a roar of fury, the Heavy flailed and swung their big arm. McCree was half a second too late and found himself flying through the air.

The impact of the column was nothing compared to the jagged points of his chestplate digging into his skin. He could  _ feel _ the systems failing, taking his organs with them. For a second he lay there on the ground, wheezing as he struggled to regain his vision. Everything had gone black and fuzzy, not only from the hit and impact, but from the compression of his chestplate on his lungs and ribs.

He blinked and darkness was replaced with brilliant blue. At first, he thought that he was looking at the blue, blue sky of Rialto; then it moved and the glowing blue was replaced by something duller, smeared with tufts of white and harsh edges of crumbled stone.  _ Now _ he was looking at the sky—what he had seen earlier were the ghostly forms of Hanzo’s dragons.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he let himself go limp with breathless relief. Hanzo was alive.

Hanzo was  _ alive _ .

He felt hands pawing at his chestplate, felt a brief, wet touch against his cheek and smelled blood and oil as Hanzo held a hand to his mouth to check his breathing. Hanzo was saying something but McCree couldn’t tell if he was concussed or if Hanzo was speaking anything that made sense.

Maybe it was Japanese, but McCree knew that. Did he? He was pretty sure he did.

Pain that was so intense that he almost couldn’t feel it made him delirious; his own collapsing lungs made him feel as if he was becoming untethered from reality. Was this what dying felt like?

He heard voices, felt a wash of relief and the familiar, ticklish sensation of biotics. It did nothing for his breathing, or his own failing organs, but it felt nice and helped to push back the fog of pain.

Hands pried at his chestplate, making it groan as someone tried to wrench it open. “No,” he tried to say through rubbery lips. He needed it; what little breath he could drag through his ruined throat and nose was only able to move because of that chestplate. “No,” he tried to say again, louder. “Stop. Can’t breathe.”

Distantly, he heard voices, and then he felt a click that was almost audible. It was a “leash” of golden light that even dying, he recognized. How many times had it pulled him back from the brink?

He just didn’t think that it would be able to save him now; Mercy’s skill was legendary, bordering on miraculous, but she couldn’t force organs to work when they hadn’t for nearly a decade.

Mercy said something, heard Hanzo mutter something, but the world was darker now, and fading at the edges. Was this what it was like to die?

Whatever biotics had been there before had erased much of the pain, but when he was lifted it sent pain, like bolts of lightning, through his whole body. He heard Hanzo say something softly and wondered if it was the words that McCree so desperately craved to hear from him.

_ I love you _ , he wanted to say.  _ I’m sorry _ .

But the world was dark and he could no longer feel his body. He closed his eyes and hoped that Hanzo somehow heard him.

* * *

“You’re lucky,” Angelo told him.

It felt like a dream. The lights seemed to form a halo around Angelo’s head, shining off of the golden decorations in his white dreadlocks.

“Am I?” he thought he asked.

Angelo seemed to hear him. “You are,” he said firmly, tucking the crisp blankets tightly around McCree’s shoulders. “You’re a pair of idiots, but there’s a man that loves you very much. So you had better come back to him.”

“I lost my chance,” McCree thought he said.

“Almost,” Angelo said and pressed a gentle hand to his forehead. “Now go to sleep. When you wake up, you will have better company.”

_ How can you know? _ McCree wanted to ask but as if by magic, sleep took him again.

* * *

The next time he woke up, it was dark out, and the moon cast a silver shadow through the open window. There was a dark shape on the bed next to his, swaddled in clean Medical sheets and covered with a familiar blue and gold serape.

“Don’t move,” Angelo whispered, appearing like a wraith from the shadows. His pale eyes seemed electric in the light of the moon. “How do you feel?”

McCree opened and closed his mouth a few times but realized that he couldn’t speak; his tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth and Angelo clicked his tongue. He poured something from the pitcher at the table nearby and helped him to take a few tentative sips. Slowly, Angelo eased his bed upwards until McCree was reclined enough that he didn’t need to support his head.

“Slowly, now,” Angelo cautioned as he held the cup to McCree’s lips and positioned the straw so that he wouldn’t have to strain for it. It was hard to go slowly because as soon as the water touched his tongue, McCree realized just how thirsty he was. “You can have more in a little bit,” Angelo told him gently, pulling the cup away. “How are you feeling?”

“Feel like I was run over by a truck,” McCree said, even though he felt…surprisingly fine. There was a lingering ache in his bones, and a strange kind of hurt-not-hurt in his muscles that he got from too much time spent inactive. “How long was I out?”

Angelo grunted and pulled out his penlight. “You were just about flattened by a truck,” he said. “It’s a miracle that you’re not paralyzed. Do you know what day it is?”

“Even if I  _ hadn’t _ been run over by a truck, I wouldn’t know what day it is,” McCree said dryly.

“Fair,” Angelo conceded. “Where were you last?”

McCree took a moment to think, trying to pull apart his memories of a night long ago that had collided with his more recent memories of high noon. “Rialto,” he said. “There was a Heavy. And an Assassin. We were delivering…”

The medic grunted and lifted the pen upright. Without being prompted, McCree followed it with his eyes as Angelo pinched his chin in his fingers, holding his head still. He blinked quickly when the light was turned into his eyes and tried not to wince.

“You know that the nanites and biotics and shit works,” McCree grumbled. “Why—”

“Because with whatever fuck-up you have in your system, we never really know,” Angelo told him flatly. “Hold still.”

Huffing, McCree submitted to the brief examination with ill grace. He itched to look over at the lump on the berth nearby but didn’t want to get his hopes up. It was probably just Ange, sleeping after taking her turn watching over him as he slept. Really, it was much more likely that it was Ange than Hanzo. Ange at least liked him still; he doubted that Hanzo even cared if he was alive anymore.

When he was done, Angelo held the cup to McCree’s lips and let him drink more water for a bit. “I can hold it myself, doc,” he muttered when Angelo pulled the straw and cup away.

Angelo jabbed a finger at the spiderweb of needles and tubes taped to his arm. “You pull out any of those and I’ll duct tape you to the berth,” he said. “So help me, Jesse McCree.”

“What’s got  _ your _ panties in a bunch?” McCree asked because he really didn’t have any sort of survival instinct or any idea of when to quit.

For a moment, Angelo regarded him with such ice in his eyes that he almost expected to see Mei with her little freezer gun behind him. Then his expression softened ever so slightly. 

“You were on the brink of death,” he said. “You almost didn’t make it. So I’m  _ sorry _ that I’m a  _ little fucking tense _ .” He gestured to the lump of blankets on the berth next to McCree’s. “We’re all tired. Everything is  _ still _ so touch-and-go with you that we had to keep you under constant surveillance.”

McCree sighed, already feeling tired. “I’m—”

“Whatever,” Angelo said in a clipped voice. “You’re awake now. That’s a good sign, but it doesn’t mean that you’re out of the woods yet.” He walked over to the berth and gently patted the lump. “He’s awake.”

The blankets exploded and McCree was surprised that he was so disappointed to find that it had indeed been Ange. Then he was disappointed in his own disappointment. Why would  _ Hanzo _ be there? What right did he have to make such a wild assumption?

“You fucking idiot,” Ange hissed. There were dark bags under her eyes and her usually-flawless skin seemed ashy. Her hair was a mess, tangled and sticking up in all directions with only some of it still being held by her hair tie. “I ought to  _ kill you myself _ .”

“Aww,” McCree managed to drawl in what he hoped was a passable attempt at his usual teasing. “Didn’t know you cared.”

Angelo bodily held Ange back from attacking him. “Don’t pull out his cords,” he scolded, though he sounded darkly amused.

“I won’t,” Ange hissed, wiggling in his hold. “I’ll  _ rip out his throat _ .”

“Couldn’t help it,” McCree said. “The Heavy just wanted to high-five me. Couldn’t leave him hanging. Them.” He frowned and tried to remember if there was any indication on that particular Heavy, but his mind was coming up blank. In all honesty, he couldn’t remember too much of the actual  _ fight _ with the Heavy. Blood loss and organ failure would do that to a person.

Ange made an inarticulate noise of very justified rage and Angelo patiently held her aloft to keep from murdering him. Though he knew that she was very much capable of murdering him—and probably, in some ways, really wanted to—he knew that this was her way of releasing her worry. From her rumpled appearance, she really  _ had _ been terrified that she’d lose him.

There were very few people like them left, after all. The reluctant ones that were only there because they didn’t want to watch their friends die. The ones that were there not because they believed in some great cause or higher calling, but because they remembered what it was like to have people you trust at your back.

Because they trusted their friends and if  _ they _ wanted to do something dumb like die for some chicken shit cause like “world peace”, then they may as well offer what they could, too.

Ange had no desire to be there. She’d done her time in Overwatch and still had the scars—mental, physical, emotional—to show for it. The years afterwards, she had gone around the world helping others, doing what she had always dreamed of doing. Now, for her to be back here, was like reliving the past again.

Only this time, she didn’t have youthful optimism on her side. She’d seen the world and the evils of the whole damn human race. Like McCree, she had looked into the eyes of Death and had given it the finger.

Even though he knew that Angelo was also in the same boat (minus the experience with Overwatch the first time around), he knew that it was nice to have another that understood in a way that Angelo couldn’t relate to.

When Angelo put her down, she sat carefully at the edge of his bed and threw her arms around his neck. “Don’t leave like that,” she said softly into his neck.

Awkwardly, he leaned his head into hers, unable to do anything else with his prosthesis on the table next to his bed. “I didn’t leave you,” he said softly as Angelo moved away to give them a semblance of privacy. “And if I did, I know that you’ll bring me back just so you can kill me yourself.”

He thought that he could feel her fingers digging into the unforgiving metal of his chestplate. She trembled against his side and he rubbed his cheek against her head in what he hoped was a soothing motion. For all he knew, he might just seem like some kind of giant cat-person or something.

After a long moment, she took a deep breath and sat up again. Her eyes were watery as she looked up at him. “Damn right,” she said, her voice wavering a little. “Damn  _ fucking _ right.” She flicked his nose and got to her feet as the doors to Medical opened. “Just in time.”

McCree was confused for a moment before hearing footsteps. Angelo opened the divider separating McCree’s section of the ward from the rest of Medical. His breath hitched. There stood Hanzo, his arms filled with a tray piled high with a stack of bowls and a large ceramic crock. Hanging from his arm was a cloth bag that appeared to be filled with more food. 

“Hey,” Hanzo said awkwardly. “You’re awake.” 

Ange gave him a strange smile. “Ang’,” she said with a wink at Angelo. “Why don’t you take those things from Hanzo? They must be heavy. I’ll go grab some tables for us to eat at.” 

The thought of food made the hunger in McCree’s belly roar, but it subsided beneath Hanzo’s awkward stare. In any other instance, McCree would find it hilarious that the two medics were attempting to give him privacy by coming up with flimsy excuses—there were more than enough tables and chairs nearby for them all to eat comfortably—but under Hanzo’s eyes, he couldn’t move. 

Angelo took the bag and tray from Hanzo and ducked away, followed by Ange who winked at McCree and slid the screen shut behind her. He caught her looking at Hanzo with an unreadable expression before she disappeared from view. 

For a moment, McCree was freed from Hanzo’s stare as he turned to watch the divider close. “Their transparent excuses are almost funny,” Hanzo said to the wall. “But I suppose we should appreciate that they attempted to give us privacy.” He turned to look at McCree and walked quickly to the side of his bed. 

“Han—” McCree began but was silenced when as casual as you please, Hanzo leaned down and kissed him. He made a truly embarrassing sound and tilted his head into the kiss. If Hanzo was bothered by the fact that McCree had to have surely been unconscious for some time, he gave no sign, continuing to kiss him so leisurely that McCree could feel it in his bones. 

With what sounded like a regretful sigh, Hanzo pulled back. There was something disarmingly soft in his eyes and McCree knew that he had to have fucking died because there was no way that Hanzo would be looking at  _ him _ with stars in his eyes. 

Hanzo huffed a little laugh, and yes that was definitely 100% Hanzo’s laugh. It could be nothing else and McCree’s heart, if he had one left, flip-flopped in his chest. “I suppose,” he said slowly, cupping McCree’s face in his hand as if he couldn’t bear to fully part from him. Slowly, Hanzo leaned close, pressed his forehead to McCree’s and sighed before pulling away completely. 

He sat down on the edge of McCree’s bed and put a hand on the middle of McCree’s chestplate, where his heart would be. “I suppose that we have some talking to do,” he said.

McCree swallowed, dizzy with the realization that  _ Hanzo had to know _ . And he was still there, looking down at him with all of the tenderness that McCree had always wished to see on his stoic face. “‘Bout what?” he found himself asking, because he couldn’t help sabotaging himself one last time. 

“About Suheily,” Hanzo said. “First you’re going to tell me about this—” he tapped at McCree’s chestplate with his knuckles. Then his voice dropped lower into a predatory growl that should  _ not _ have been making his dick react the way it was. His eyes sparkled with blue light and McCree could feel the weight of a life of a thousand mortal years staring at him. “—and then you will tell me if she is still alive.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCree and Hanzo finally have their talk. Then they run, like cowards, and talk again. 

Hanzo listened quietly. His eyes were electrifying—quite literally—and McCree couldn’t find it in himself to look away. 

McCree told Hanzo what scattered information he had, often backtracking in what were probably very confusing tangents to describe people like Jackson and Suheily and what crumbs he remembered of their sordid pasts. 

Hanzo asked very few questions and McCree thought that if he had asked like this earlier, his face terrifyingly blank and his eyes sparkling with lightning from his dragons, he thought that he would have told Hanzo everything. If he had been stuck in interrogation with Hanzo like this, he would have sung like a bird.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? McCree struggled to swallow and as if sensing this, Hanzo reached for the cup, filled it with water, and held it—and the damn straw—for McCree to drink carefully.

Hanzo had been right, back in the shooting range. It was easier to be asked than to offer up the truth. If he couldn’t even tell Hanzo this most basic, most complicated thing about himself, then how could he possibly be trusted for anything else?

But he couldn’t possibly think of _not_ telling Hanzo now, even if it was too late.

All told, he only spoke for a handful of minutes. There really wasn’t much that he could tell Hanzo about what had happened—especially since he had already looked at McCree’s medical files. Anything that he had to share that wasn’t written in black and white on those old-fashioned pages was anecdotal at best.

All the same, he still sang out everything for Hanzo. He tried to keep it cold and clinical, to keep from begging Hanzo to understand why he didn’t say anything, but he was ashamed to hear it in his voice nonetheless.

Hanzo poured more water for him and held it out for McCree to drink and he obediently did so. The blue lightning in his eyes had faded somewhat, but the shimmering hue hadn’t left, giving his brown eyes an unnerving blue ring.

Not for the first time, McCree wondered if Hanzo was aware that he appeared like that; like some kind of angel, or demon, or spirit. It was always hard to tell with Hanzo, but he thought that he didn’t know.

Then again, it was very rare that he got like this, and McCree wasn’t sure if he was lucky or cursed to see such expressions in his eyes.

“This… _Suheily_ ,” Hanzo said at last, speaking as if her very name was a grave insult. Even without the lightning, his eyes were still electric, and McCree couldn’t quite put his finger on exactly how he felt about it.

“Confused arousal” would be a more accurate description, he thought; there was no hiding the lump in the bedding that he _knew_ Hanzo had to have seen, but was graciously ignoring.

He realized that Hanzo was watching him like a hawk watching prey and realized that he hadn’t heard a damn thing that Hanzo had said. “Hnn,” Hanzo said. “Now that I have your attention again,” he said with a wry little smile. Then he moved his hand and put it high on McCree’s thigh like the complete and utter _asshole_ he was. “Tell me where this _Suheily_ is.”

“Six feet under,” McCree croaked, his eyes on Hanzo’s hand on his thigh. His skin seemed darker against the starchy white sheets and McCree felt—and saw—his dick twitch beneath the sheets. “Killed by her own cellmate.”

“It is rare that there are blessings to be found in the American prison system,” Hanzo said dryly. “But once more, something had worked in her favor.” He stood, running his fingers along McCree’s thigh to his hip. Then he leaned over and just as confidently as before, leaned down and kissed McCree. “But for now, you are awake and well, and I am sure that you are very hungry.”

As if they had been eavesdropping (they probably were, and from the twitch of Hanzo’s lips, he had a similar thought), Angelo and Angie swept open the little partition and walked into their space, carrying the food that Hanzo had brought with him.

Hanzo cleared the bedside table and moved it in front of McCree as Angelo brought over a table and a few chairs. 

Though the doctors had clearly been eavesdropping, they were kind enough to not say anything out loud to the both of them. Instead, they served the food—some kind of fish for Hanzo, plain chicken and rice for McCree, some of Reinhardt’s hearty stew that he must have made while McCree was out for the medics—and sat around McCree.

With Ange’s approval, Hanzo picked up McCree’s prosthesis and helped him attach it. After years of doing it, McCree didn’t need reminding to test the connection, touching his thumb to each of his fingers from pinkie to pointer and back, rolling his wrist, flexing it up and down.

Hanzo watched each movement like a hawk watches its prey, something darkly calculating in his blue-tinted eyes. But he didn’t ask the question hidden in his eyes, because that was yet another something that he didn’t want to talk about, not after laying bare his most treasured, most hated secret.

“You are left-handed,” Hanzo observed as McCree picked up his fork to eat.

“Yeah,” McCree said around a mouthful of rice, even though the observation didn’t really need a response. He stopped himself from saying more—from saying that that was another thing that Suheily had stolen from him—by shoving another forkful of rice into his mouth.

From Hanzo’s expression, part exasperated and part heartbreakingly fond, he understood and didn’t ask. Instead he said, “You are going to get rice all over the bed.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ange and Angelo’s heads snap to the monitors as they beeped in high-pitched tones when his heart apparently literally skipped a beat. He hadn’t realized that it could still do that, being more or less mechanical. From the way they turned to look at him, they were just as surprised—but their looks promised teasing later. 

McCree would gladly take it, though. Especially if it meant that Hanzo would smile at him with that. He just hoped that it wouldn't be the last time that he’d see it. 

* * *

It took a few days for the medics to allow him out of Medical, and each time that Hanzo visited, it was a new revelation. Hanzo looked at him with a softness in his eyes that didn’t fail to make McCree breathless. There was a fondness, an emotion there that he didn’t want to put to name for fear of bringing up his hopes.

To do so would only lead to pain; if he was disappointed, if he named that emotion wrong, then it would hurt that much more when he learned the truth. 

It was hard not to think of it, though. What would it be like to wake up every morning to see Hanzo’s rare smile, to eat meals with him, to see that wicked curl of his lips. To hear those words, whispered in a husky voice with lips pressed to his ear. 

He supposed that it wasn’t like Hanzo was promising love and loyalty, but there must be something wrong with him because even those filthy whispers felt like confessions. 

After he left Medical, he locked himself in the shooting range and spent quality time with Peacekeeper, allowing her roar and recoil to chase away thoughts of what he could never have. Instinct told him when someone walked in; that same instinct told him exactly who it was. 

“So,” Genji said. “Want to tell me why you are defying your orders and working?”

McCree flicked the cylinder open, loaded each bullet by hand, and flicked it shut again. He and Genji both knew that he was very aware of Genji’s presence, but neither commented on it until he had to reload again. 

“Does this have to do with Hanzo?”

He tried not to flinch, but he knew that he wouldn’t fool Genji for even a moment. “Don’t make me lie,” he warned Genji. 

“Then don’t lie,” his old friend retorted. 

McCree grunted. “There are things that a man don’t want to discuss.” he glanced at Genji. “Especially with that man’s brother.” 

With his faceplate down, Genji seemed about as impassive as an omnic. At the same time, McCree knew the bastard well enough to read a wealth of information in the angle of his neck and shoulders, in the way his chin was tipped downward ever so slightly. 

“I have steeled myself to learn more than I want to know,” Genji said at last. “Because I care about my brother, and I care about you, McCree.” 

“Aww shucks,” McCree said with a levity that he didn’t really feel. He reloaded and fired again, wishing that Peacekeeper’s roar would drown out Genji as well. Genji was smart though; he’d just wait until McCree reloaded again. 

When he reached for the next row of bullets, he found that they had been swept away by a certain glow-in-the-dark ninja. One was walked over the back of his fingers teasingly and McCree tried not to act too frustrated. Despite his claims of healing and transcendence, Genji was still an annoying bastard and a little brother—the more frustrated McCree acted, the more likely he was going to act even _worse_. 

He hadn’t thought that it was possible to be as annoying as Genji was when he was being contrary, but he had since been proven wrong. 

“Nothing will be gained from running away from your problems,” Genji said, the words wise but his tone wicked and teasing. “You should face them. And maybe do something called ‘talking’. I know that the idea of it is foreign to you and my brother, but discussing problems is a good thing.” 

McCree grunted. “Nothing to discuss,” he said brusquely. “Besides, O Wise One, we already did that.” 

Genji’s choked sound told McCree just how much he believed that. “So why are you hiding here?”

Having no answer for that, McCree put Peacekeeper down and looked for his ammo. Genji didn’t just move it; it seemed that he had really hid it as if trying to be even more of a little shit than usual. 

“Genji,” McCree said tiredly. “Give me back my damn ammo.” 

Genji crossed his arms over his chest and sat on the nearby bench. “Why are you hiding?” he demanded. 

“I’m not,” McCree told him sharply. 

“I don’t believe you,” Genji said simply. “As soon as you were cleared from Medical, you hid. Hanzo’s been looking for you.” 

McCree scoffed even though his clockwork heart ached. “If he really was looking for me, he’d think to look here,” he pointed out. 

“He probably wouldn’t think that you’d be so stupid as to go against the doctors’ orders and go to the range,” Genji said mildly. “Especially given how serious your condition was when you returned from Rialto.” 

“What do you want from me?” McCree asked impatiently.

Genji tilted his head to the side. “I want to know why you’re hiding here,” he said. “And why you are hiding from my brother who is worried about you.” 

“I doubt it,” McCree muttered.

When Genji didn’t say anything, McCree glanced back and found that he had taken off his faceplate and was looking at him with a strange expression. “You love him,” Genji said wonderingly.

McCree looked again. There was no denying it—Genji would be able to read it in him no matter what he said—so he said nothing, looking down range at the targets, all on the ground with perfect headshots. 

“And he loves you,” Genji continued. “Clearly, or he would not be panicking the way he is right now.” 

The thought of Hanzo _panicking_ was enough to make McCree scoff. Hanzo did not _panic_ ; he was always in control of himself and whatever situation he found himself in. He was always ready to face it head-on, always there with answers and options and theories and with plans from A to fucking Z. 

And McCree had been right: if Hanzo really wanted to find him, he would. That he couldn’t find him when McCree wasn’t even hiding was telling—no matter what Genji claimed, no matter how much he said that Hanzo was _worried_ about him, it wasn’t true.

Genji must have sensed this, or perhaps it was just wishful thinking on McCree’s part. He sighed and stood up again, McCree’s ammo appearing on the table once more as if by magic. Fucking ninjas. “He’s drinking by the comm tower,” he said sourly. “If you can get your head out of your ass long enough to actually talk, I recommend you visit him. Maybe stop him from doing something stupid.” 

Even watching him leave, McCree wasn’t sure how he disappeared so quickly. Fucking ninjas. 

Still, the thought of Hanzo moping tugged at the strings of his clockwork heart so he packed up quickly and made his way to the comm tower. It occurred to him as he was climbing the last steps that Genji may have been fucking with him and manipulating him to go where he wanted McCree to go.

It was too late though, because he knew that if Hanzo was really there, he’d have heard McCree’s approach. McCree could travel soundlessly if he so chose but Hanzo seemed to have some kind of insane ability to tell exactly where he was even at his quietest. If he would turn around now, Hanzo would know that he was there and ran away. He wasn’t afraid to reveal his cowardice—Hanzo already knew this—but...well hell, he didn’t even know. 

Whatever it is that he didn’t want Hanzo to think spurred him forward and much to his surprise, he found Hanzo much lower on his perch than he typically was, leaning bonelessly against a tarp-covered crate. There were two bottles beside him, one half-full of liquid and the other empty. 

In a distant memory, McCree remembered Hanzo once remarking that sometimes it was hard for him to get drunk; that something in him seemed to fight him when he tried to drown his memories in whatever liquor he could find. Now, McCree wondered if it was the lightning in his eyes that fought it, the guardianship of his ancient dragons. Did they disapprove of his coping? 

But that wasn’t something for McCree to wonder; it was none of his business. 

Hanzo seemed asleep, but McCree knew better even though he’d never stayed long enough to see such an unguarded face. His brow was still too tense, the curl of the corners of his mouth a little too severe to truly be sleeping. He’d seen Reinhardt feign sleep better than Hanzo was doing and McCree was disappointed despite himself. 

“Your brother told me that he was afraid that you’d do something stupid,” McCree said, forcing himself to say something. He pulled out a cigarillo and patted his pockets for his lighter. 

“Fuck Genji,” Hanzo said, his English slurred and his accent sharper. 

McCree grunted. “Eew. No.” He found his lighter and lit up, sighing out a plume of smoke. 

“Should you even be smoking?” Hanzo asked and McCree glanced over his shoulder at him, finding him still bonelessly sprawled against the crate. One hand was fumbling for the bottles next to him and McCree watched him pick up the empty one, holding it to his face and squinting suspiciously at it. “Can you even feel it?”

Hooking a leg back, McCree caught the other bottle with his foot and kicked it over the edge to crash on the rocks below. Mei would kill him for littering like that (or whatever she’d call it), but McCree had other things on his mind than environmental damage from a broken bottle of booze. 

“Why are you out here?” McCree asked, staring out over the water. 

Hanzo made a disgusted sound. “Why are _you?_ ” he asked. “I thought you would find somewhere _better_ to be.”

Cautiously, McCree looked back at Hanzo. “Why would you want me around?” he asked, realizing that Hanzo had been... _looking_ for him? 

Why would he want _McCree_ around? Especially knowing exactly how fucking stupid he was? How he made such questionable decisions.

Hanzo’s face scrunched up cutely. “Because I love you,” he said with such ease that McCree felt like someone had ripped out his heart all over again. But people said all kinds of things when they were drunk, and from the way his voice was slurring as if his tongue weighed too much to speak he was really, _really_ drunk. 

Sighing, McCree stubbed out his cigarillo, crushing the wrapping. He left it on the railing and pretended not to see the brisk sea wind whip it over the cliff. Maybe later he’d go and pick up trash on the beach or something, if only to assuage whatever lingering guilt about littering, even though Mei didn’t know he had done anything. 

Turning back to Hanzo, he found that Hanzo’s eyes had slid nearly shut. “It almost hurts how happy it makes me to see you,” Hanzo slurred as if unable to keep the words back anymore. McCree’s clockwork heart constricted and his breath hitched. That didn’t seem to stop Hanzo because he said, “I had never wanted to stop time as badly as I do when I look at you.” 

Then, in the characteristic 180 mood swing of the drunk, Hanzo closed his eyes and slumped further against the crate. “I have long dreamt of this moment. Of telling you my full thoughts and feelings without censor. But now that I have the chance and the courage to loosen my tongue, I find that it cuts deeper than any blade that you only stare at me.”

Who would’ve known that a drunk Hanzo was a fucking poet?

Still, the thought of confessing his own infatuation—saying The Words back to Hanzo—was tempting. Like this, Hanzo would be less distrustful, would need less convincing of McCree’s true intentions.

At the same time, telling him while inebriated would cause too much trouble. For one, once sober—should Hanzo remember this moment—he would most likely see McCree saying such things as a way for a sober man to placate a drunk one. Lies that tasted like truth to the desperate were the best way to convince the broken in this state; for McCree to The Words would only taste like a lie when Hanzo was sober.

The sound of Hanzo’s sigh was nearly a sob. “So I had looked too much into it,” he said, more morose than McCree had ever heard him. For once, Hanzo wasn’t so perfectly put together. He wasn’t as shattered as the times they had shared a bed, but a different kind of broken. Here, he was shards of broken glass whose edges cut himself as much as anyone that reached for him.

Suddenly, McCree realized that they really were two peas in a pod in their own way. Just as McCree had hidden his literal aches and pains, Hanzo hid his own grief, his joy, his rage. If McCree’s chestplate held his insides in place, Hanzo’s own iron walls bottled up everything until the pressure was too much.

And now McCree had a rare glimpse at such an eruption—and he was there, _could_ be there to shore up those cracks, or to ease them open to relieve the pressure. 

_And_ , he realized, Hanzo could be the one to hold his heart together in ways that his chestplate couldn’t, didn’t.

He sighed. “Come on,” he said, barely keeping from saying more. He didn't know what more he would have added—“love” would’ve made him sound like Lena, “dearest” too much like Reinhardt—but at that moment he realized that he wasn’t sure what endearment would sound more like him.

He swallowed because now, more than anything, he wanted to be _himself_ with Hanzo. After all, Hanzo was the only one that knew about his chestplate. Well, _one_ of the only people that knew. Not even Soldier: 76, the world’s worst-kept secret, knew.

Only Hanzo and the medics.

And Hanzo had stayed. He wasn’t there out of obligation or fascination, wasn’t there because he was more or less serving as McCree’s PCP. Hanzo was there for—apparently—love. And if not love, then because he genuinely cared for McCree in some capacity.

He hadn’t run, after all. He hadn’t wavered in his care, had consistently visited McCree until he had been released from Medical.

McCree couldn’t blame him for thinking that McCree had rejected him. Through that lens, he could very easily see how his self-pity would read like rejection, like disgust directed at Hanzo rather than turned inward. 

“Come on,” McCree said again. “Let’s get you back to your room.” What he _wanted_ to say was ‘get you back to your bed’, but the last thing he wanted to do was give Hanzo the wrong idea.

Hanzo’s head rolled on his neck with the flexibility of the drunk. “Why?” he asked. “It is empty. Lonely. Except for the spider…”

Which of course made no sense, but Hanzo’s head was drooping again and McCree realized that the next thing that he should be worried about was Hanzo sliding off into an inebriated slumber. He wasn’t sure that he could carry Hanzo as far as the living quarters, and knew for a fact that Hanzo would be _mortified_ if McCree summoned Zarya or Reinhardt to assist in carrying him.

Or anyone, really, which was why he always hid in an out of the way corner—he didn’t want to allow people to see that he was human beneath his thick armor.

“Come on, now,” McCree said, kneeling in front of Hanzo and cupping his cheek with his right hand. Something rose in his throat when Hanzo tipped his head into the touch and if his breathing and heartbeat weren’t regulated by his chestplate, he would have thought that his breath would hitch, his heart would skip.

Then again, it had literally happened in Medical the day he woke up.

“Your back won’t thank you if you sleep out here,” McCree reminded Hanzo. “You’re as young and fit as you believe, but that don’t mean that you don’t have your own fair share of aches and pains. Come on; let’s get you back to your room.”

Hanzo grumbled wordlessly and didn’t budge the first few times that McCree tugged on his arms. Then with a heaving sigh as if imparting a great honor, Hanzo allowed himself to be tugged to his feet. He swayed in place and McCree slung an arm around his shoulders.

Immediately, Hanzo plastered himself against McCree’s side, his arm looping around McCree’s waist. Despite how uncomfortable it must have been, Hanzo tucked his head against McCree’s chest, his temple bumping against its hard metal planes. Then again, he moved with the bonelessness of the drunk and probably wouldn’t feel it until the next morning, if he felt an ache from it at all.

“Let’s go,” McCree said, his chest feeling too-warm and too-tight. He squeezed Hanzo’s shoulder, unable to help himself and though he couldn’t tell exactly how, he knew that Hanzo was smiling.

He took the long way around, doing his best to avoid running into anyone else on base. Fortunately, the only person (that he was aware of) that was in the areas that they passed through was the old Bastion unit who lifted its repair arm in an absent wave before once more falling still. Its presence always unsettled McCree, but at the same time he found it strangely cute that the Bastion unit was as obvious in its enjoyment of basking in the warm sun as any spoiled cat.

Even if it chose to do so in its turret form.

McCree still wasn’t sure how, but aside from the Bastion unit they saw no one else and McCree was able to open Hanzo’s door with minimal fuss. Setting Hanzo down on the edge of the bed, he found a bottle of water in the case stored in Hanzo’s closet and brought it back.

“Drink,” he said coaxingly but apparently an argument wasn’t what Hanzo wanted because he immediately took the bottle and chugged it.

“That is worse than your usual swill, cowboy,” Hanzo said, squeezing the bottle when he was done so it crumpled in his hand. “Give me some _real_ liquor.”

“It was water,” McCree said, trying not to laugh. He’d seen Hanzo drunk before—many times over the course of their friendship, in fact—but this lightness was something new.

Hanzo squinted at him. Then, with the dignity more befitting an ancient prayer, Hanzo said, “Top 10 Anime Betrayals.”

Turning his head, McCree covered his laugh with a cough and reached for another bottle of water. “Here,” he said and watched as, once more, Hanzo threw back the bottle like he thought it was alcohol (which, hilariously, McCree would have described him throwing back like it was water) and gave McCree an unhappy, cross-eyed look when he was done.

“I do not feel well,” Hanzo announced and McCree looked around for something to help, finding a decorative basin shoved halfway under the bed. He felt bad that Hanzo might end up ruining it, but it was better than being sick all over himself. McCree managed to shove it under Hanzo’s mouth just in time and held it uncomfortably while Hanzo retched.

Wordlessly, he held out a bottle of water at the end of it and strangely quiet, Hanzo rinsed his mouth and sipped slowly. McCree thought another mental apology toward Mei and dumped the basin out the narrow window, which offered Hanzo a lovely view over the Strait. Belatedly, he peeked out and was relieved to find that nobody was below the window, ducking back inside and closing the window just in case someone thought to look up.

When he turned around, he found that Hanzo had slumped against the headboard and was looking at McCree out of the corner of his eyes almost coquettishly. “Why are you here?” he asked.

“Come on,” McCree said, probably for the fiftieth time that afternoon. He put the basin on the table next to the window and moved to kneel in front of Hanzo. “Let’s get you ready for bed.”

Hanzo made a noncommittal sound and watched with the detachment of the inebriated as McCree lifted one leg. “But it is early still,” he said.

“Yes,” McCree told him patiently, his hands sliding smoothly over Hanzo’s boots. He propped Hanzo’s foot on his thigh and searched for the zipper, the buttons, or whatever was fastening them to Hanzo’s leg. “But you’re drunk, so you ought’a sleep it off. At least rest and let your body do its thing. I can bring you back some dinner later.” 

“Can’t,” Hanzo mumbled, his eyes half-lidded as he watched McCree fumble with his leg.

McCree let his hands slide up to Hanzo’s knee, feeling around the bands fastening Hanzo’s boots at the knee. They felt more like metal clips and McCree wondered how that could _possibly_ be comfortable when his fingers felt a knot of scarring.

“If you keep doing that,” Hanzo said in a strangely slow drawl that didn’t match the intense look in his dark eyes. “I might get the wrong idea.”

McCree grunted as he explored the knot of scarring under the pretense of feeling around the edge of Hanzo’s boot for the fastening. “What wrong idea is that? Because I’m not fucking you,” he said. “For one, you’re drunk, and frankly I doubt you could even get it up, with all the alcohol you’ve had; for another, I think that we should have a long and serious talk. When you’re all sobered up, of course.”

The laugh that Hanzo responded with sounded far too brittle and McCree looked up at him in alarm. “You might give me the wrong idea that you care,” he said and McCree could feel his clockwork heart breaking.

He stood up and leaned in close enough to smell the bile and booze on Hanzo’s breath. Hanzo wasn’t afraid of him—even drunk, he had stared down death and a host of other, more terrifying things a dozen times in his lifetime. The hellish glow in McCree’s right eye was reflected in Hanzo’s but he still met McCree’s gaze squarely.

“Don’t you _ever_ doubt that,” McCree told him, his voice pitching into a low growl. Hanzo’s chin jutted out like the stubborn bastard he was as if to say, _watch me_. Growling, McCree pulled away. “This conversation is better served sober,” he said. “And I will not give you ammunition to weave a wall of thorns around yourself, sweet.”

The look on Hanzo’s face at the endearment felt like the crushing blow from the Heavy in Rialto all over again. Then Hanzo did just what McCree didn’t want him to do, retreating somewhere inside where he couldn’t reach.

McCree caught Hanzo’s hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “Come on,” he said, nearly begging. “Help me take off your boots and we can get you to bed.”

For a heart stopping moment, McCree wondered if he had already lost Hanzo but then he slowly turned to look at McCree once more. “Will you stay?” he asked in a heartbreakingly small voice. Hanzo was always calm, collected, and in control; to see him visibly breaking, to hear it in his voice, made McCree feel helpless in a way that he hated more than anything. “At least until I fall asleep? Then you can leave again. If you want.”

McCree bent and kissed Hanzo’s knuckles again, then the middle of his palms, the heel of his palms, the insides of his wrists. “I will stay as long as you want me to,” he promised. “As I said earlier… I think we need to have a nice, long talk.” Hanzo’s eyes opened wide as if he was forcing them open and McCree smiled. “Come on,” he coaxed yet again. “Help me get these boots off and we can go to sleep. As long as you don’t mind…” McCree rapped his metal knuckles against his chestplate, making it clang.

“All relationships are about negotiation,” Hanzo said, letting his head fall back against the headboard. “If I am not opposed to working around… _that_ … then will you look past the fact that I have not worn boots in almost a decade?”

McCree thought back to the knot of scarring his fingers had found around the edges of the metal clips. He swallowed. “Are they removable?” he asked.

Hanzo’s eyes, which had begun to droop once more until they were dark slits, opened comically wide as if Hanzo was trying to stay awake. “Why would I?”

“Because I’m going to remove mine,” McCree said, wiggling his metal fingers at Hanzo. “So we may as well remove yours as well. You and I might ignore all kinds of common sense as we try to punish ourselves, but we both know that it’s healthy to remove our prostheses to let the ports rest.”

For a long moment, Hanzo simply stared at him. Then he made a sad sound and cradled McCree’s metal hand between his. “Do not hurt yourself like that,” he said like a petulant child.

“Only if you promise the same for me,” McCree told him. “We can take care of each other, okay?”

Hanzo blinked owlishly up at McCree. He didn’t quite agree, but he looked down at McCree’s arm, tracing the chipping edges of the lacquered skull with an alcohol-clumsy finger.

They’d work on that, McCree hoped.

Then, in the characteristic abruptness of the drunk, Hanzo released McCree’s hand and bent with a grunt to unfasten his prostheses. McCree caught them and placed them aside, pushing up the loose legs of Hanzo’s wide-legged trousers whose name that he could never remember to look at the skin around the ports.

Unsurprisingly, they were red and inflamed, the thick scars more apparent against the swollen flesh. He wanted to kick himself for not noticing how much Hanzo was torturing himself but knew at the same time that Hanzo was a literal ninja.

When he truly wished to not be seen, he was invisible; it would, of course, carry over to details about himself that he wanted to remain hidden.

Instead, McCree bent and pressed soft kisses to the swollen flesh above Hanzo’s knees and smiled to himself when Hanzo’s breath hitched. He pulled away to uphold his end of the bargain, putting his hat on the bedside table and beginning to unfasten his chestplate.

“No,” Hanzo protested weakly.

“It’s okay,” McCree assured him quickly. “I got some time. I just gotta undress a bit.”

Hanzo watched him with such obvious anxiety that McCree moved quicker than he typically did, disconnecting the chestplate and its mechanisms to allow him to remove it. He placed it aside, leaning it against the headboard beside Hanzo as he quickly stripped down to his undershirt. With practiced ease he smoothed his undershirt to prevent bunching beneath the chestplate and grunted as he lifted it back in place again. It wasn’t necessarily _heavy_ (or he had simply gotten used to the weight) but it always felt better to make that little sound as it settled over his shoulders again.

Hanzo watched intently, his eyes following McCree’s fingers as he clipped it in place and activated the mechanisms that would allow his organs to continue functioning. Then he watched McCree find the fastenings in his shoulder that connected his prosthesis.

Once more, McCree grunted—not particularly in any pain or because of the relief of weight but just for the sound of it—as he eased the prosthesis down. Hanzo’s alcohol-clumsy hands caught it and helped him to put it on the side, awkwardly balancing it on the bedside table beside McCree’s hat.

Leaning in, McCree pressed a kiss to Hanzo’s forehead. “Scoot over,” he said. “You’re taking up the whole bed.”

The look of joy on Hanzo’s face broke McCree’s heart all over again. Hanzo scooted over and McCree slid into place on the cot that was really too small for the both of them. After some wiggling, Hanzo ended up halfway on top of McCree, bunching some of the thin blankets beneath his cheek in the only concession to the uncomfortable edges of McCree’s chestplate.

“I love you,” Hanzo said as he collapsed into the boneless sleep of the inebriated. “I hope you love me too.”

Even if McCree was able to respond immediately, it wouldn’t have mattered because between one breath and the next, Hanzo was well and truly asleep.

He wasn’t particularly tired—not being drunk like Hanzo was—so McCree lay awake, listening to Hanzo’s long, deep breaths. There was a hint of a snore there, unsurprising given the old break in Hanzo’s nose, but McCree didn’t think it too bothersome.

Then again, even if it was loud enough to shake the windows, McCree knew that he’d only get ear plugs because he would never give up an experience like this.

Once more, he cursed Suheily for taking something like this from him, forcing him to lie there with Hanzo’s warmth and weight and not being able to feel any of it. But then, he supposed that if she hadn’t done her dumb shit experiment, he never would have been able to get here, with Hanzo curled against his side.

He’d never be able to see the way that the blanket draped over Hanzo’s shoulders, the way that he curled over McCree’s chest as if to listen for a heartbeat. All he’d hear was the rhythm of machines and McCree could only hope that it was good enough.

“Huh,” he said, looking up at the ceiling. There was an enterprising spider that had apparently made itself at home in one of the corners of Hanzo’s room. “So that’s what he meant by the spider.”

Even though he knew logically that arachnids cared not for the angst of human existence, he felt like the damn thing’s eight beady eyes—invisible at this distance—were judgmental as it watched the two of them.

“Shut up,” he told it. “We’re learning.”

He let his hand slide along Hanzo’s back up to his hair. Hanzo was too deeply asleep to respond, but McCree liked to think that he wiggled just a little closer. Smiling, he let his eyes slide closed and enjoyed the sound of Hanzo’s deep, even breaths.

* * *

McCree woke to a dark room and an empty bed. It took him a moment to realize exactly where he was but when he did, he bolted to his feet so fast he nearly pulled something.

As if the universe sensed his panic, the door slid open, revealing a bright rectangle of light from the fluorescent hall lights and Hanzo with a tray in his hands.

He looked much more put together, but long association—and obsession, if he was being honest with himself—made it obvious to McCree that he was still somewhat drunk.

“I was surprised that I was able to sneak out,” Hanzo said a little too neutrally as he walked in. “You must have been tired.”

“Must’a,” McCree echoed. “Um…”

“Sit down,” Hanzo told him and moved to put the tray on the desk, wrinkling his nose at the smell likely emanating from the basin. He shoved open the window nearby and both of them sighed as the smell of the salt air began to clear the heavy smell in the room. “I brought food for the both of us.”

McCree obeyed. “I was supposed to do that,” he protested weakly, accepting the bowl that Hanzo handed to him.

“I believe the saying is, ‘you snooze, you lose,’” Hanzo told him archly and McCree laughed. “This time it was literal.”

Looking down at the bowl, he found that it was leftover chili and rice with onions, cheese, a dollop of sour cream, and a sprinkle of hot sauce—just the way he liked it. Smiling, he took a bite and sighed. “Just perfect.”

Hanzo looked down and away, a hint of a blush on his cheeks. He cleared his throat. “I know poor taste when I see it.”

“I doubt that,” McCree said around a mouthful of chili and rice. “You’ve got good taste all over.”

“I cannot possibly,” Hanzo pointed out dryly. “If I have good taste, why would I l—like you?”

McCree overlooked Hanzo’s attempted coverup for the moment and grinned roguishly. “Nah,” he said. “If you like me so much, then you _must_ have good taste!”

They continued to bicker like that, neither of them bringing up sensitive topics of Hanzo’s apparently-prosthetic legs, his drunken confessions (if indeed Hanzo remembered them), or McCree’s chestplate. For the moment, as they ate dinner together in a room that still somewhat smelled like bile and alcohol, they allowed themselves a moment of comfort in the familiar.

By the time they were finished eating, the stale air of the room had cleared and Hanzo carefully piled their dishes—and the dirty basin—next to the door. He sat down at the desk once more and McCree twisted as well as he could to face him.

“So,” McCree said when the silence stretched longer. “I guess I’ll start.” He cleared his throat and realized that he didn’t know where to begin. But he’d already been allowed to be a coward and enough was enough. “I owe you an apology. I avoided you, yes, but not for the reasons you think and me… not having the damn decency to explain that to you led us to where we are now.”

Hanzo made a face. “I assure you,” he said dryly. “I do not need your assistance to find a reason to drink.”

Unable to help himself, McCree gave a ragged laugh. “Still, I did you a disservice. And I ought to explain myself.” They both paused as McCree considered where to start. “See,” he said and paused again. Then he sighed. “Whenever I tell anyone about…” he trailed off, gesturing wordlessly at his chestplate. “I get… looks.”

“Ableism?” Hanzo asked a little dryly and McCree thought of his legs.

He shook his head. “Not all of it. I’m sure a lot of it was, intentional or not. But…” again, he trailed off and shrugged. “Most of it was pity. Concern—what kind of idiot would willingly sign up for a procedure like this?”

“But it was not strictly voluntary?” Hanzo asked, his brow scrunching cutely. McCree wanted to kiss the wrinkles away but kept himself on the bed or they’d never get anything done.

He shrugged. “That’s just what they told me. I don’t know how true it is. If you think _I_ lie a lot, then you don’t know Suheily or Ashe.”

Hanzo regarded him for a long moment. Then he said quietly, “You do not lie to others as often as you believe you do. You lie the most to yourself.”

“I lie to everyone every day,” McCree pointed out. “By existing and knowing that only two people on base—now three, I suppose—know about this.” he knocked his knuckles against his chestplate. “A lie by omission is still a lie.”

Hanzo regarded him for a long moment. “You believed that I would run, just like everyone else,” he said at last. It wasn’t really a question, but McCree nodded. “Having no other reason to believe that I would stay with you, I can see why you would think that.”

There was more than a hint of self-deprecation in there and McCree gave him a crooked smile. “I should’a known better.”

“Why would you have any reason to believe that I would not leave you as well?” Hanzo countered. “I have given you no reason to believe such things.”

McCree chuckled. “We could argue this back and forth for forever,” he said. “But then we’d never really talk about what we should.”

A strange expression crossed Hanzo’s face. “You are correct.”

The both fell silent and then McCree laughed. “Well,” he said. “ _In vino veritas_ , right?”

Hanzo’s face scrunched up again, but McCree couldn’t quite read his expression, if it was disgust or confusion, or at McCree’s probably butchered pronunciation. “Yes,” he said flatly. “But the _wine_ should not have been flowing for you to hear such sentiment. You probably should not have heard such thoughts at all,” he added much more quietly.

If they had been outside, the sea wind would have ripped the words away before McCree could hear them, but without such meddling and in Hanzo’s relatively enclosed room, it was clearly audible. Hanzo must have realized it as well because as soon as the words left his mouth, he flinched.

“I thought that we were doing… _this_ ,” he gestured vaguely between the two of them. “Just for sex. I thought that… _that_ —”

“Can you not even say it?” Hanzo interrupted, somehow managing to look terrified and terribly amused at once. Only Hanzo, McCree mused. “Are you ten?”

McCree flipped him off, somewhat relieved that whatever awkwardness had dissipated enough for them to bicker like that. “I thought that we were doing this for a quick fuck,” he said bluntly and they both flinched. “But then I realized, the first time I left, that I wanted it to be more than that.”

“Oh?” Hanzo asked dryly. “Was the sex that good?”

“It was your expression,” McCree said quietly and the mirth faded from Hanzo’s face. “Like you wanted me to stay—and I realized that I wanted too, as well. But…” he gestured helplessly at his chestplate.

Hanzo’s face crumpled and McCree’s clockwork heart rose into his chest in panic; his loud and sudden laugh had a manic edge to it that made McCree’s fingers itch. “It seems that I am not as good at hiding as I like to think I am.”

“No,” McCree countered. “You are, but I’d been making it my job to learn your every tell.” Hanzo’s laugh faded slightly. “It’d only taken that expression, which I’d learned to read, to realize why.”

Hanzo swallowed and McCree watched the bob of his throat. “Then say it,” he challenged.

“I don’t think that love has a definition,” McCree said slowly. “It’s not like saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’; it’s not black and white, and there is no _one_ definition, but…” he looked at Hanzo who had schooled his expression into careful neutrality.

But he’d known Hanzo for long enough to see the cracks. He was afraid to hope and afraid to fear; afraid that McCree would say exactly what he wanted to hear and afraid that McCree was lying to preserve their friendship.

“But looking at you, it’s not so impossible to define ‘love’,” he said rather lamely. “Because love is looking at you and wanting nothing more than to kiss you, to wake up with you every morning, or to see your smile. Love is feeling at peace when I’m near you, like I’m safe because you’re watching my back as closely as I am watching yours. It don’t— _doesn’t_ —have to be about sex but it can be and I don’t want it to be everything that we are. I just want to see you smile and I want to look at you and _know_ …” he gestured helplessly.

“Know what?” Hanzo asked quietly and McCree shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But that’s fine. Because I don’t need to know—I don’t need to _think_ , not about this.”

For a long moment, Hanzo leveled him with a look that was unreadable even to McCree. Then he sighed deeply and stood. He crossed the space between them in two steps and stood beneath McCree’s splayed legs, lifting both arms to cup McCree’s cheeks.

“I hate you,” he said and McCree smiled, lifting his arms to Hanzo’s hips.

“I hate you, too,” he said and with a broken little laugh, Hanzo leaned down to kiss him.

There was still more that needed to be discussed but for the moment, McCree allowed himself the simple pleasure of having Hanzo practically climbing in his lap, kissing him as if afraid that he’d disappear.

They rearranged themselves on the bed, McCree propped against the headboard and Hanzo straddling his thighs but when Hanzo’s kisses turned deeper, McCree laughed. “We’re not fucking in front of your stupid spider,” he said when Hanzo made a questioning sound.

“Is your room acceptable?” Hanzo asked. 

“I think I got a bigger bed,” McCree replied. 

Hanzo smiled. “Good,” he said. Despite the finality of his words and the implications, Hanzo didn’t move from McCree’s lap. He sighed, sounding almost happy. 

There was more to discuss, more that they should discuss at that moment, but they were both cowards set in their ways. Baby steps, as they said. For now, it was enough to know where they stood; how they would move forward was another matter entirely. 

But for that moment, making out like horny teenagers beneath the judgmental gaze of a spider, it was enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the last of it for now! Honestly, I can see myself revisiting it later, but the main arc of the story is finished. Thanks to everyone to made it this far. 
> 
> ~[DC](https://twitter.com/dracoduceus)
> 
> P.S.: HELLO?! Someone did fanart?! My poor heart....
> 
> [Mickearts](https://twitter.com/mickearts) on Twitter did an _amazing_ piece of Hanzo with his angry lightning eyes and let me tell you, it was an amazing thing to wake up to this morning. You can find it [here](https://twitter.com/mickearts/status/1365988021552742405). Thank you so much!!

**Author's Note:**

> Love it? Hate it? Let me know! I always do love hearing from you all.
> 
> You can also find me on Twitter at [Dracoduceus](https://twitter.com/dracoduceus). 
> 
> ~DC


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